


And You Understand Now Why They Lost Their Minds and Fought the Wars

by marauders_groupie



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Sense8 (TV) Fusion, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/M, Gen, M/M, Sense8 AU, a lot of emotions ahead
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-04
Updated: 2015-11-10
Packaged: 2018-04-30 02:14:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 21,620
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5146532
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marauders_groupie/pseuds/marauders_groupie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clarke doesn’t understand why they say that soulmates are one soul in two bodies. Her soul has five other bodies and she would give her life for any of them.<br/>But wherever there is good, evil is lurking close too, and the battle for survival begins.</p><p>Sense8 AU.</p><p>
  <b>Winner of Bellarke Fanfiction Awards 2016 Best Crossover Fiction.</b>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. I Am Also a We

**Author's Note:**

> First things first - a huge, immense, massive, elephantine thanks to [lushatrocity](http://archiveofourown.org/users/lushatrocity) to whom this work is dedicated. Thank you for coming up with it in the first place, thank you for rehashing my ideas with me and thank you for every single suggestion. I don't think I would have been able to pull this off if it weren't for you. Thank you!
> 
> This fic had a long time coming but it's here - finally. It means a whole lot to me because my writing style is heavily inspired by Sense8, and I hope that reading this will make you feel something. Maybe, if I'm lucky, you'll be able to immerse yourself in the world of these characters.
> 
> The title is from Taylor Swift's You Are In Love and it fits. All of them are (a little) in love with each other.

Clarke doesn’t understand why it is said that soulmates are one soul in two bodies. Her soul has five bodies and she would give her life for any of them.

The first one she meets is Jasper Jordan. Funny enough, she never once thinks that she might be going crazy, seeing someone else’s reflection where hers should have been in the mirror. She sees him one brisk September morning and it’s like her whole body hums; “ _Oh, there you are. I’ve been looking for you_ ”. No qualms about the state of her sanity, nothing but a slow relieved smile spreading across her face at the sight of a boy with goggles perched on top of his head.

“Whoa, I’m hot.”

“No, you’re not,” Clarke teases. “I am.”

She presses her finger to the mirror but only sees his in the reflection, nearly touching hers but not quite. He laughs and so does she.

He might not have been wrong about saying that he is hot because he is Clarke as much as she is Jasper, lines between their respective entities completely blurred until they melt into each other. She laughs in the surgery that day, a scalpel in her hand and a patient bleeding out on the stretcher, but giggles burst from her lips nevertheless and she knows that Jasper must be having a really good day – even if she isn’t.

Later that day, she falls asleep to vibrating basses shaking her body and strobe lights piercing her eyelids just where she can’t reach them. She feels Los Angeles the way Jasper feels it, loud and alive, chemicals making their way through his body as well as hers – ultimate euphoria is the only thing she remembers before floating away.

It’s raining when she meets Monty Green and he sidles up to her, nudging her shoulder with his. When she blinks, it’s dry again and she’s roaming the streets of Boston, but she feels Seoul on her skin.

“It’s been like this for ages,” he pouts. “All rain and no shine.”

She shouldn’t know him, he may as well be a complete stranger, but her soul hums again and all she has for him are smiles. They sit on the bench in a park, autumn leaves crunching under the soles of their shoes, and he tells her about himself in exchange for stories about her life.

“I work for an internet security company,” he offers.

“I’m a doctor.”

“But I’m a hacker. That’s much more fun.”

Clarke tries to look surprised, his gentle features and shy smiles nothing like what she imagines a hacker would look like, but he’s still Monty and she knows what he’s capable of.

“If I could have chosen, I would have been an artist.”

“And you couldn’t?”

Clarke shakes her head, offers no explanation. Monty doesn’t ask.

Miller catches her as she’s preparing her breakfast and it’s like plunging into ice-cold water when she finds herself standing next to him in a darkened room. It feels like blood boiling in her veins and adrenaline makes her hands shake.

“What do you need?” she asks him because he needs something – she can feel it.

Nathan Miller has dark skin, dark beanie and dark gloves on his hands as he presses one ear to a giant metal safe. He looks at her like he considers not trusting her but in the end – he does.

“I need a distraction.”

Clarke nods, runs out into the hallway and stares at the glass panels that must be equipped with expensive alarms. Miller knows that there is a staircase leading to the lower floor and he plans to leave via the rooftop of the building, and so Clarke knows it too.

She never thought about whether she was corporeal when she was sharing her soulmates’ worlds but when she throws a small marble bust at the glass, it shatters and the alarms blaring nearly pierce her eardrums.

Miller thanks her when she returns and then she’s not needed anymore. Her cereal went soggy while she was gone and she plops down on the kitchen chair.

“Huh.”

Raven Reyes is all teeth and grit when she summons Clarke. Maybe they summon each other, Clarke tired of being alone and no one else popping up to brighten her day. Raven is lying on the lower bunk in a room with walls made out of metal and a small window over her head lets in sunlight so vibrant Clarke’s eyes hurt.

“Welcome to my humble abode,” Raven grins and Clarke can’t help but to smile back. They must be somewhere cold, chill is seeping into her bones through her very thin sweater and Raven scoots over and makes some space for her under the blanket.

She’s warm and she’s good and she’s brilliant. Clarke loves her already, loves her like she loves the rest of them.

“Where are we?”

“Antarctica. The Chilean base needed a kickass mechanic,” Raven shrugs, faking nonchalance Clarke can see right through. “And here I am.”

“Did you see penguins?”

“You’re on Antarctica and you only care about the penguins?”

“I like penguins,” Clarke blushes, burrowing deeper under the blanket and scooting closer to Raven like she intends to soak up her warmth. When the girl laughs, the sound reverberates in her chest and Clarke’s skin vibrates where it’s pressed into her soulmates’.

“I did see penguins, yup. Pretty cool. Not as cool as me, though.”

“No one could be cooler than you, Raven.”

She knows it, on a very deep level – it’s something that’s ingrained into her cells. Maybe what romantics say when they want to explain love with science is true – their atoms must have been close to each other at the beginning of time. Universe expanded, galaxies and black holes were created, and still – they found each other every single time.

When she leaves, she’s sorry not to see Raven anymore. The girl is like the sun, all energy and heat where Clarke is restlessness hidden under the disguise of peacefulness. Clarke loves her instantly.

Bellamy Blake is the last one she meets and while she’s standing in the middle of his apartment, breathless, he narrows his eyes at her in distrust.

“Took you long enough.”

“Excuse me?”

He looks kind, he looks charming and he is absolutely beautiful. Clarke loves all of them – loves Jasper who keeps her company with his stories of blowing up the lab he works in, loves Monty for his comforting hugs exactly when she needs them, loves Miller for threatening to punch whoever pissed her off, loves Raven because Raven is like a sunny day after a month of all rain.

Clarke loves all of them but with Bellamy – she thinks that they may be two neutron stars on a path of collision. The explosion they could create would truly be a sight to behold.

But she is back in the present and his arms are crossed at his chest and Clarke feels so small and so vast at the same time. Her fingers itch to touch him, knowing instinctively where to press and where to caress.

It doesn’t feel like she has a choice but even if she did – she’d choose him.

“Well, you met everyone else before you came to me,” he explains, scowling.

Clarke chuckles, lighter, when she realizes what this is about and the thought is so absurd because she loves them all but nothing led her to Bellamy yet. She knew of him, only vaguely, from what the others told her but this – this is different. This is _better_.

“But I came. It’s the thought that counts.”

He feels like sunshine and smells like saltwater when he finally cracks a smile and buries his face into her hair. Clarke never wants to leave his side. She loves all of them but her heart swells and thrashes against her ribcage when Bellamy is there.

“But you came.”

Her skin crackles with electricity when he drops a hand to her waist and she thinks that there are so many important things to learn about him still, but she presses her lips to his all the same and it’s not kissing – it’s _poetry_ ; her lips brushing against his in stanzas, their hands roaming in iambic pentameter and when they stop it’s being overwhelmed by a poem so much you gasp because your bones move and your heart shifts to make room for all the emotions you didn’t know you could hold.

The five of them are Clarke’s precious thing the world’s filthy fingers can’t defile. She keeps them in the shadow between her heart and her soul, and she cherishes them above everything else. They are not only a part of her – they _are_ Clarke.

Wells doesn’t know about them but he must sense something because he just smiles when she offers a sheepish “Rain check?” for plans they made.

“Yeah, go, go.”

She doesn’t tell him that she is now no longer one soul in one body, or even half a soul. She is the universe and she forms a whole galaxy with five other people. If someone told her she could love like this, belong like this, feel it in her bones like an absolute truth, she would have told them it was impossible.

But now – now there is nothing else she can imagine, only the six of them arranged around her living room. Monty is holding hands with Miller, the latter raising a challenging eyebrow at the rest of the group as if to warn about teasing them, but Raven can’t hold it in when Monty addresses him as Nate.

“Oh, _Nate_ , you think you could get _me_ a Coke, too?”

“I think not, Reyes.”

“Come on, I’m your soulmate!” Raven protests, nearly hitting Clarke as she flails.

“You’re a pain in the ass, that’s what you are.”

“Fine,” Raven raises her chin, petulant. “I won’t be fixing your getaway cars anymore, then. You’ll have to find yourself a new mechanic and risk getting screwed over.”

Miller drops a Coke in her lap when he returns from Clarke’s kitchen and she can’t help but to exchange an amused glance with Bellamy, sitting at her right. Their thighs brush, their elbows touch and it’s always hard being far from him.

He’s the one who appears the most often – when she’s hiding away in a storage room in the hospital, a long shift that makes a lump of fatigue form somewhere near her stomach, webbing across her body. He tells her about his day, rubs her back as she lets out ugly, tired sobs.

It’s only with them that she can feel this powerless and powerful at the same time, knowing that even if they see her at her weakest – they know who she is. They give her the sort of strength that only comes with knowing that you can be weak in front of someone and they’ll still know what’s in your core, what truly makes you who you are. 

If her soul hums and sings when they are near, its voice is louder and deeper – sending shivers down her spine – when Bellamy is there. She couldn’t choose which one of her soulmates she loves the most, but what she feels about Bellamy is a gravitational pull - force strong enough to bend space and time around them.

She finds that she would do anything for his sister, the day she meets her. Octavia Blake is gorgeous and it’s slightly unfair that both of the siblings look like supermodels. It isn’t just about the defiant set of their jaws, so sharp they could cut glass, and it isn’t about their muscles and Octavia’s curves where Bellamy has planes. They shine from within, mischievous glimmers in their eyes, laughter bubbling up in Clarke’s throat whenever she’s near.

“Is she laughing?” Octavia asks Bellamy, busy trying to dry off her hair. They live in the Philippines and it’s rain season – something Octavia likes to complain about.

Also, Octavia can’t see Clarke. She knows about all of them, the bond between the Blakes too strong for Bellamy to keep it a secret, and she doesn’t doubt her brother for one second. Instead, she takes it graciously – up until the point where she realizes that Bellamy is in love with Clarke.

Then she becomes merciless. But mostly benevolent. Mostly.

“Tell her I’m going to kick her ass if she’s laughing,” Octavia warns.

“I’m not!” Clarke throws her hands up in surrender, even though Octavia can’t see it. Bellamy, however, seems amused and fond, looking softly at both his sister and Clarke.

She knows how much Octavia means to him, knows everything about what he’s had to do to keep them alive and loves him even more for it. Only, Clarke doesn’t know how is it possible to love him even more – how is it possible to love any of them more, when the love she feels already spans over galaxies and takes up the whole universe with the sheer strength of it.

But if anyone can create new universes where there were none, they can do it.

“She says she’s not, but she is.”

“Bellamy!”

“What an asshole! Why do you love her? No – wait – Clarke, why do you love my brother? You do know that he’s like the world’s biggest nerd?”

Octavia and she have a friendship that’s mostly based on Bellamy interpreting on Clarke’s behalf but the girl did add Clarke on Facebook and now their friendship got the add-on of eggplant and alien emojis.

“Yeah, but he’s my nerd.”

“She says I’m her nerd. Also, O, I’d just like to add that there is a reason why they call history nerds history _buffs_.”

“You _are_ buff,” Clarke grants, and Bellamy kisses her temple.

Octavia squints at them. “Did she say something I wasn’t supposed to hear? Am I going to be grossed out?”

“She agreed that I’m buff.”

“Ugh! Disgusting, Clarke!”

She still sends her a message that night, a short “Thank you”. Clarke understands how much it means to them to have someone they can trust – to have five other people they can trust, but one of them especially.

Everyone has war scars that ache when the weather changes but Clarke would gladly take them on if it meant that Octavia and Bellamy could be happy and peaceful for once.

None of them actually consider how it is possible that this is happening to them. Jasper, Raven and Clarke are sort of scientists of the group and sometimes the three of them talk about it, come up with different possibilities they plan on testing. But mostly, they don’t ever take it for granted and they’re happy to have each other when everything else goes left.

Clarke is on a graveyard shift when she meets Anya, her shoulders sagging and her back aching from too many long hours spent standing, but she awakens instantly under the bruised woman’s intense gaze. It isn’t a humming sound this time – Anya sounds like war drums and impending doom.

“You’re a sensate,” she tells her, pressing a hand to her stomach where blood trickles through her fingertips and drips onto the bed in regular intervals.

Clarke’s hand is still clutching the scalpel in the pocket of her scrubs and Anya – whose name she knows instantly, not even sure why because that woman is not her soulmate, not in the way Bellamy and Raven are – smiles.

“Excuse me?”

There’s a cracking sound when Anya shifts on the bed, hissing with pain, and only then does Clarke remember that she’s a real, actual patient. She lifts up her shirt, inspecting the knife wound on her stomach. They get a lot of patients like that but only one of them so far arose the sound of drums and the feeling of marching into battle.

Two stitches in, Anya is completely still except for talking while Clarke works on closing the wound. It looks bad but it’s not deep, thankfully.

“You are a sensate. That’s what it’s called. How many of you are there, five, six?”

“Six.”

Anya nods, short. “The six of you are a cluster and a woman who was in mine, Lexa, she triggered your birth.”

“Where is she?”

“Dead.”

Clarke doesn’t know the woman – she doesn’t even know Anya, but her breath catches in her throat at the mention of their de-facto mother being dead. It doesn’t sound like she died from a natural cause. If anything, it sounds ominous and Anya’s deadpan voice doesn’t help at all.

“What happened to her?”

“BPO. Look out for them.”

She snaps her gloves off and throws them in the bin, returning to stand in front of Anya. The scene looks surreal like everything does at 3AM when Clarke’s had only three hours of sleep in the last two days but it is happening.

And it feels a lot like they are in danger.

Bellamy and Raven appear next to her as soon as she realizes that there is something to be worried about, panic making her fingertips tremble and Bellamy’s warm hand on the small of her back can only do so much to ground her.

“What the hell is she talking about?”

Anya looks up, a wry smile spreading on her face as she looks directly at Raven and Clarke freezes. She shouldn’t be able to do that, it feels like sacrilege somehow. Raven is her soulmate, no one else’s.

This woman sharing their bond feels wrong, so deeply wrong.

“You’re Raven.”

“Damn right I am!” Raven shouts, standing just a little in front of Clarke as if she wants to protect her. If Clarke could move, she’d do the same, but she’s paralyzed by the sudden fear.

Bellamy shifts his weight and speaks up right next to Clarke, not moving his hand an inch as he studies Anya. “You owe us some explanations.”

“I don’t _owe_ you anything. You are not my responsibility. I am here only to warn you because the sensate who activated your psycellium connection was from my cluster.”

She’s dead, Clarke thinks, and feels the two of them stiffen.

“How can you see us?”

“Eye contact. I can’t share – not like you can, but I can see you.”

After a second, Anya huffs and stands up, wincing in pain as her hand flies to her right side where stitches are protruding from her skin.

“That’s not important and I don’t have a lot of time. You need to be careful of what you do – there is always someone who wants to hunt down people like us.”

And they all thought that they were safe. They all thought they were soulmates, a romantic, childish idea that could explain how it was possible to feel what another feels, to see each other even when there are continents separating them.

Nothing comes without a price.

“Be careful, be quiet and when you notice something odd – move.”

Clarke doesn’t unfreeze until Anya’s left and then she lets out a breath she didn’t know she’s been holding all this time, collapsing on the bed and feeling all strength seep out of her.

Raven’s face is an aquarelle of furrowed brows and lower lip worried between her teeth. Clarke knows that she is trying to make sense of what just happened – she is a scientist, this world’s innate workings spread their arms for her.

Finally she nods to herself, serious, and looks straight at Clarke. “I’ll talk to Monty. We’ll find out what BPO is.”

“Thank you.”

She’s gone from the room like she was never even there but Clarke feels how worried she is, senses when Monty comes to learn what happened and then Miller.

When Jasper finds out, Clarke is all nerves and anxious little chuckles. He was the first one she met and he is still the one who affects her the most.

“Let’s get you home, Clarke.”

Bellamy’s voice is calm but he is worried too – all of them are. If she could, she’d wrap them in a bubble where they could all be safe from the world. But she can’t and her arms are tired of carrying syringes and gauzes, stitching people up and watching their wounds being ripped open.

There’s still a stain where Anya was sitting and Clarke sees it bright and clear underneath the crackling fluorescent lights in the room. If she wanted to fool herself into thinking that this was all a weird dream, it’s impossible now.

“I have to protect them,” she tells Bellamy as they are sitting in the last car of the subway train taking her home. This early in the morning everything seems dreamlike, people’s faces tired and sagging, everyone a little more morose than they usually are.

“We’ll find a way,” Bellamy assures her, squeezing her hand a little tighter on the seat and she sighs because they _have_ to find a way.

Lexa died and Clarke doesn’t know how Anya must have felt about it but she knows that if anyone from her own cluster died it would all be pitch-black darkness she’d allow to swallow her whole.

They are all parts of her and Clarke knows that the stories had it wrong when they told her that she would spend her life searching for the second part of her soul to make her feel whole. She has five and her love doesn’t feel any smaller for being separated into six parts instead of just two. It feels greater, nobler, strengthened where it should have been stretched thin.

She is all of them – Raven’s frost-bitten cheeks, Monty’s relief when he wakes  up without a nightmare, Jasper’s humor, Miller’s grin when he cracks a safe – the same she wears when it spreads on his face, and Bellamy’s – Bellamy’s hot skin when the sun caresses it, his restless mind – but she would want to be Bellamy’s everything all the same.

No longer is she only Clarke. Not when she can feel her cluster’s sadness, tears streaming down her cheeks as she walks down the street, butterflies fluttering in her stomach when Jasper first meets Maya. Her heart could find them in the darkest of nights and her soul would always remember what it’s like to be whole.

She is Jasper, Monty, Raven, Miller, Bellamy – and they are her.

There aren’t lengths she wouldn’t cross to keep them safe.

 

 

 **June 2015**  


Humid air sticks to Clarke’s skin and she doesn’t remember when was the last time she felt this alone. Her skin used to feel snowflakes catching on it when Raven did outside repairs, sun when Miller retired to the coast of France after a successful heist, hurricane rain when Bellamy left home without an umbrella.

Now she only feels what is in her proximity. Her ears catch the sound of thunder rumbling when the weather forecast predicts storms for Boston area, and not when the weather in LA is shit. Her body stays glued to her apartment floor – never transporting while she’s cooking or watching the TV because one of her soulmates needs her.

Anya told them that they were a cluster, that they were all sensates. It’s science. It’s nothing but amino acids hydrolyzing and DNA spirals shifting and mutating. They are sensates, their brain has a different sort of nervous system called psycellium and it allows them to share their lives with each other, share their emotions and share their skills.

Everything that makes them the way they are could be synthetized in a laboratory and over the last few months, Clarke rejected the idea. What they are is soulmates. She could never love someone because her cells allow it – she loves them because her soul recognizes theirs.

And Anya can stick her science up her ass for all Clarke cares.

But if Clarke reached out now, she would find nothing but empty space where five other people once stood. And she misses them. She misses Jasper and how enthusiastic he was about Maya and how trusting he was. Misses Monty and how easy it was to smile when he was near. She misses Raven and her grin, her warmth, her understanding. She misses Miller and the softness beneath his hard shell – displayed only when his soulmates were close.

She misses all of them but she misses Bellamy the most, how safe she felt, how loved, how everything was a dream come true when he was next to her. They were supposed to meet each other soon – really, truly, corporeally.

Every single plan any of them coined fell through and now Clarke is standing in her darkened living room, people outside going on with their lives when she can only stare into the darkness because light hurts, laughter hurts and everything is pain where happiness once stood.

It’s been a month without them, forty three thousand eight hundred and twenty nine minutes, and not a single one in which she didn’t miss them.

 

Wells comes around every afternoon to check up on her, all compassion and understanding. He knows, it felt pointless to lie to him. And she could never lie to Wells, Wells who grew up with her – Wells who is the first thing she remembers in her whole life. Wells who never betrayed her, Wells who believed she could be better than this monster who allows people to die so she could save a precious few.

Bellamy would say it’s a pyrrhic victory, a victory that is only barely won. The toll it inflicted on Clarke was so devastating that it may as well be a loss. Everything is a loss when she can’t see her soulmates, her cluster, her everything.

Wells sits with her on the couch, TV playing in the background as if it was a morbid soundtrack for this fail of epic proportions she calls her life. Everything feels strangely normal – people commute to work every day, they fall in love, they die and she is stuck in a loop.

“Everyone’s been asking about you, Clarke.”

She knows, and it changes absolutely nothing. She can’t bear to see anyone these days because she is reminded of how relieved Monty looked when he made it after being chased, of how Miller hugged her for the first time – bringing into the embrace everything he couldn’t say with words.

“I know, Wells. I know. But I can’t come to work.”

“Your mom is worried, too. She’s afraid that there’s something worse happening.”

“You know it is,” Clarke turns to him, blue eyes peering into the brown ones and what she sees there would break her heart if she had any to spare. Wells loves her, the best friend she has in the whole world, and when she told him about her cluster his reaction was exactly the same as Octavia’s – he believed her.

She misses Octavia, too. The girl sends her texts from time to time, just checking up on her. Clarke could think that was about Bellamy, just doing what he would’ve wanted her to, but she thinks there is something else.

You don’t abandon the people your loved ones loved. But love is such a weak word for what they had, a connection that transcends time and space, spans across galaxies and all borders.

They were there when the time began, they would be there when time ended.

“I know that this is about your cluster but are you sure that this is the right thing to be doing?”

No, of course she is not. But –

“What else is there to do?”

Wells leaves, like he always does, but she is thankful for the few brief hours of comforting human touch, mindless chatter about work and his girlfriend. She likes Harper – Harper is kind, and she values kindness now. Wisdom is wonderful but kindness is the comforting hands on your shoulders that raise you when you fall.

It feels unfair, to have spent so little time with them. There were so many things she didn’t do – so many things she still wants to do. But there is nothing now, not when she reaches out, and it’s her fault – in many more ways than just one. She would give anything to feel any of her soulmates just one more time.

 

** October 2014 **

****

Monty is in danger.

She knows it like she knows that this world is hurtling through time and space at a velocity no one can feel because there is ground under our feet and humans are always preoccupied with tiny details.

It is an absolute truth and it jerks her body from sleep so violently she’s left gasping for breath. And then she’s not in Boston anymore but in Seoul, running through spaces between skyscrapers and her – Monty’s reflection in the glass panels.

“What’s going on?”

“They found me. They must’ve found out that I was researching them and – Clarke, they’re close.”

It’s her fault. She is the one who told him to find out everything he can about BPO after Anya came to the hospital. Everyone was worried but she was the one who turned to Monty Green and told him to risk his life for intelligence.

She didn’t say exactly that but it doesn’t matter now.

They are running through the complexes of buildings and trying not to crash into business people going about their daily lives as they try to keep their own.

“Calm down, Monty, we’ll – we’ll figure this out.”

Miller is her and Miller is Monty and she is all three of them, but he’s there and it brings a relief. Miller always saves them.

“Here’s what you’re going to do, Monty,” he speaks, and it’s with such softness that Clarke realizes the two of them must feel exactly what Bellamy and she are feeling. They are all soulmates, a cluster, but only some of them can love the others and it is incredible.

“Miller, thank God!”

“Yeah, babe, I’ve got you now. Get on the subway, go home and get your passport. Raven is gonna crash the power in the whole block, and that’ll-“

The sound of alarms pierce the calm disturbed only by chatter of people milling about and Miller grins. Lights go out in buildings all around them and people stop to stare. “That’d be Raven.”

“I love Raven,” Monty breathes, flashing a watery smile at Miller who squeezes his hand and nods, more to himself than to any of them.

“Get your passport, but – no, go home, go to the airport and I’ll have someone make you a fake.”

Clarke’s eyes widen. “You can do that?”

“Of course I can,” Miller scoffs, but no heat to it. “What do you take me for?”

“Alright, what’s next?”

“You get on the first plane to Paris. I’ll be waiting for you and I can keep you hidden.”

Monty is relieved and so is Clarke, more because she knows that he’ll be safe with Miller than because she feels exactly what he’s feeling.

She can’t stop herself from placing a hand on his shoulder and whispering, “Thank you, Nathan.”

He doesn’t correct her this time and everything must be going according to plan because Clarke no longer sees Seoul wherever she looks – she’s back in her bedroom, the alarm clock beeping furiously and only faint glimmers of light coming through closed curtains.

 

When she is checking on one of her patients, a fifteen year-old admitted with a concussion, she freezes in her tracks. Monty is safe. Monty is safe and Miller is kissing him like he’s the first and the last thing he’ll ever kiss and her heart swells with affection, shivers running down her spine because they are her cluster and she loves them more than she will ever know.

 

They meet in her living room that night. Everyone is huddled around Monty, Raven’s hand is ruffling his hair, Bellamy is holding his hand, Miller is wrapped around his waist, his legs resting on Monty’s thighs and Jasper is touching his shoulder, eyes wet with tears.

Clarke comes to sit in front of him and doesn’t miss the way Bellamy’s eyes cut towards her, worried, relieved, alarmed – everything.

“I am so sorry, Monty.”

“It’s not your fault.”

“But it is. If I didn’t tell you to look up BPO, they wouldn’t have found you.”

It’s Miller who speaks next, rolling his eyes. “Stop torturing yourself, Clarke. It’s BPO’s fault for trying to hunt us down like dogs. Not yours.”

She loves Miller.

Later that night, it’s Bellamy who stays with her and no one has the heart to tease them about it. They all need comfort now and if Clarke wanted to reach out to Raven and Jasper, she would probably find them curled up in her bed, crying and smiling and feeling so much.

It was never painful, being so connected with each other – to feel fear when someone from your cluster feels it, to have tears streaming down your cheeks because you are so sad and you don’t know whose fault it is, to laugh where you should not laugh because a soulmate of yours is happy and bright and no one can contain it.

Bellamy smells of Manila, tropical rain, old books he loves brushing his fingertips across. And he feels like he belongs, has felt like he belongs since the first moment she saw him, as if her soul already knew that it would find its most desired part in him. Her hands know him, her lips only want to touch his and everyone else feels wrong when she knows how it is with Bellamy.

Nothing else, only he and only ever he, like a supernova exploding across dark skies, light finally illuminating the black space. Celestial bodies are nothing compared to him running his fingers down her spine. Scientists can speak about their big bang and atoms but they have nothing – nothing on the soul smiling at Clarke’s soul. They can take their science – she loves Bellamy.

He climbs into the bed with her after a long and gruesome day, and Clarke doesn’t even bother thinking how strange it probably must seem. But he is not strange, the polar opposite of it. She doesn’t know how her apartment ever felt like a home without his presence.

Her bedroom is dark, only slivers of early-morning light filtering through closed curtains, and the only things Clarke can feel are her starchy sheets grazing her cheeks and Bellamy’s soft skin where he is curled up around her. They never talked about doing this, never decided, but they knew when it was that they needed each other the most.

Most of the days, she’s just looking forward to coming home and snuggling up to him.

She’s well on her way to falling asleep, eyes firmly closed and her voice faint when she remembers.

“What time is it in Manila?”

He nuzzles into her neck and she feels what he’s saying rather than hears it. “I just came home from work. Five in the afternoon.”

“What’s it like?”

Her skin crackles with electricity when she shifts to lie across his chest, his hand absent-mindedly tracing her vertebrae over a threadbare shirt she sleeps in. Anything is better than scrubs that reek of rust and medicine-

Bellamy smells like coffee and coconut and she pokes him in the arm, annoyed in that fond way you can only manage with someone you love.

“Come on, I love hearing you talk.”

His mouth curls into a wry smile when he glances at her and she feels her cheeks getting warmer.

“And yet you always fall asleep.”

“It’s because I’m comfortable with you.”

It’s hard to fall asleep these days, her mind is a whirling hurricane of thoughts and feelings that never stops spinning. She sees her patients’ faces, feels caffeine still coursing through her veins and she doesn’t know how it’s possible but it’s always harder falling asleep when she is that tired.

What she doesn’t say is that she wasn’t this comfortable with anyone in a long time. She has one-night stands, enough to not crave human touch but – this is different. There is no one else she trusts enough to fall asleep next to.

“It’s beautiful,” he finally says, eyes fluttering towards the ceiling and a smile playing on his lips. “The sky is a million shades of blue, seeping into the ocean until you can’t tell the difference between the two anymore. There are children laughing in the streets, my neighbor’s baby is gurgling on their balcony and the first lights are flickering. You’d love it.”

Clarke feels the smile in his voice even if her eyes drift shut and now she allows his words to paint the picture for her. His words always sounded like a noble and proud thing, able to weave even most ordinary things into fantastic tales.

In a different life, he would be a man leading people into battles. There would be many of those who would die for him, strengthened by his words.

In this life, however, he is an educator. Somehow, that seems even nobler.

“I’d want to draw it,” she whispers, imagining the colors mixing – blue with a dash of red, lilac sky, dark blue backdrop with stars glistening in the night.

“Yeah,” he chuckles. “You would. Maybe tomorrow, huh?”

“Yes. Tomorrow.”

 

** December 2014 **

Clarke meets Maya Vie during one of the last sunny afternoons before what will be a long winter, and her heart flutters exactly like Jasper’s.

She knows of the girl, of course, she’s met her – Jasper was excited when he told them about her. “She is a sensate, too!”

After Anya and what has happened to Monty, it is hard to trust other sensates but everyone decided to try to because Jasper likes her. Well, likes her is an understatement. Everyone’s heart beats faster when he’s close to her and no one can help but to be captivated with her small, happy smile.

They tease Jasper but they are all happy for him.

Maya is waiting for Clarke on the last step in front of Clarke’s apartment and she recognizes the small, curled up figure in the darkness instantly.

“Maya?”

Maya looks relieved to see her, tension visibly draining from her shoulders, and she nods. She is not _visiting_ her, she is actually there, and Clarke can’t help but to be confused.

“What is going on?”

“We need to talk.”

Her stomach plummets but she ushers Maya into her apartment, these days not being safe for sensates. The girl follows her in, politely takes off her shoes and her coat, and thanks Clarke for the coffee she makes them.

“Alright, so what is this about?”

“We need to talk in private, Clarke.”

Without her cluster.

“That’s impossible.”

Maya shakes her head, reaching for something in her pocket and emerges with two blue pills on her palm. “It’s not impossible, it’s just going to be tiring. But these pills control your psycellium and they – well – they block out your cluster.”

Clarke recoils instantly, something about blocking her cluster being so deeply abhorrent, verging on abomination. It’s just like having someone who is not from your cluster sharing your link, although with Maya it never seemed as repulsive as with Anya.

“Who would do that?”

“I’m sorry, Clarke, but I need you to take this pill.”

“And why should I trust you?”

“Because if you don’t, you’re all going to be dead.”

There might be a more sensible choice than to take the pill but it’s by far the fastest and Clarke does it, swallowing it with her coffee.

After a minute, it feels like something is clouding her mind. Her vision turns blurry at the edges and she sees Maya stumbling over from the kitchen, draping herself across the couch. Clarke feels queasy, like she is about to be sick any moment now but there is absolutely nothing on her mind.

Where she would once reach out to her soulmates, there is nothing now and she shivers at the sensation.

“I hate this,” Maya comments, gritting her teeth and struggling to sit up. “It feels so wrong.”

Clarke agrees but can’t open her mouth for the life of her.

“I need you to know something, Clarke. I couldn’t tell Jasper because – I love Jasper, but my intentions weren’t exactly honest. Cage Wallace, he’s – he’s a part of my cluster – he sent me to spy on you.”

She can’t feel Jasper but her protectiveness kicks in and Clarke awakens immediately, as much as possible with that drug hazing her mind and making her feel boneless.

“What the _hell_?”

Maya’s face is blurry – everything around Clarke is blurry but she fights it, sits up as straight as she can. Maybe it’s because of the pills, but Clarke doesn’t think it is – the bile rising in her throat, pain tugging on her insides until she feels her soul shrivel to nothing.

Her cluster should be there to see Maya’s downturned lips and the remorseful look in her eyes, something wicked in the air. It’s the last moment of calm before the storm Clarke can feel approaching.

And then Maya speaks up and there is a pain of a thousand knives piercing Clarke’s skin, until there is nothing more but terror.

“Cage is going to give you up to BPO.”


	2. Kill or Be Killed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The plot thickens.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can't believe how lovely all of you are! Seriously, your comments were wonderful and I couldn't stop smiling. So know that karma won't be a bitch to you, it'll probably sprinkle you with some glitter.
> 
> And as for me, I can sprinkle you with plot. Is that going to be alright?
> 
> Good! Enjoy! :)

Maya is talking but the only thing Clarke registers is her mouth opening and closing. There is no sound to her words, nothing but the static thrumming in Clarke’s ears – absolute oblivion of panic, fury, terror and fear that paralyzes her body.

Maya is talking but the only thing Clarke registers is that Cage Wallace is going to give them up to BPO and there is no rhyme or reason to it – even if there were, Clarke wouldn’t have heard it. She needs Miller and Raven, calm under pressure, vigorous and ready for a fight.

But she only has herself and Maya frowns at her, the girl who has naiveté written all over her face and yet she’s the one who was sent to spy on them.

“Clarke?”

No, no, not her cluster. Anything, just not her cluster – not her soulmates, when she knows how they feel and how they make her feel. Without them, there would be nothing, only a gaping black hole where her heart once stood.

“Clarke, are you listening to me?”

They are her small corner of order in an increasingly disordered universe and she is not going to give them up. Even if she has to trample over thousands and millions, her soulmates have to be kept safe.

“We don’t have a lot of time!” Maya shrieks, her knuckles going white from gripping Clarke’s couch and then she sits up straighter, determined not to cower under Clarke’s glare.

“Thanks to you we don’t.”

“You don’t understand – I want to help you! I don’t think Cage has the right to do this – to give you up so we could stay alive. BPO is hunting us down every day, every waking hour we have to stay hidden and careful and – no.” Maya’s tiny fists clench and Clarke can see the determination in her eye but she’s just one girl against a whole army.

“BPO’s chief researcher, Lorelai Tsing – she needs someone to experiment on, a cluster. But she needs only one and Cage’s dad worked for them – that’s why he got the head-start. And if I could get him to meet you, at least one of you, he’d tell them where you are and they’d find the rest of your cluster.”

Crashing, breaking, burning. There is a wildfire scorching Clarke’s skin and she digs her fingernails into her palms, every word coming out of Maya’s mouth leaving a bitter taste on her tongue.

Only the thought of her cluster gone is incomprehensible. She can sense the darkness that would arise if they were caught and only the hint of it is sharp and stabbing, a pain bigger than she can imagine. The experiments they’d do on her, the needles they’d pierce into her skin and her mind – that means nothing. She is only one, but there are five other parts of her soul that need to be kept safe.

It is out of that, the primal self-preservation instinct, that she clears her throat and looks at Maya.

“What do we need to do?”

 

* * *

 

 

“No, I don’t believe you! Maya would never do that!”

Clarke loves Jasper and he is the first one she connected with but he can be so thick in his firm belief that people are basically good. She knows their darker parts, those tiny fractions of their souls that have gone sour with evil, and that is why she knows what they are capable of.

Jasper, with his wide smile and trusting eyes, doesn’t.

“Jas, you know I’m telling the truth,” she pleads.

Maya wanted to talk to her first because – and Clarke had come to terms with it – she’s the mom of the group, always making sure that Miller eats – even if he’s in the middle of planning a heist, always making sure that Raven has her thermo socks on when she’s doing outside repairs on the base. They are equal and they all care about each other, but it’s only Clarke and Bellamy who make sure that they eat and sleep enough.

It isn’t something they’ve talked about but most of them didn’t exactly have the greatest childhoods. Raven never met her dad and her mother was an alcoholic who kept her around only for child-support checks. When she turned eighteen she found her things in two boxes in front of her mother’s apartment door with a note taped to them – ‘Don’t come back.’

Bellamy’s mother died when he was eighteen, leaving him to take care of his sister. And even before that she wasn’t around – always working, always making something out of nothing. The Blakes loved their mother but they were lonesome children, adapted to surviving in the worst conditions and turn to each other for help.

Miller’s father was a police officer who loved his son as much as he could, seeing that he’d become a thief. But Nathan never could understand why you would want to risk getting killed to save someone who meant nothing to you and out of that conflict a much bigger one arose – estranging him from his father.

Monty is an orphan, raised by a well-meaning grandmother who threw him out after he first got arrested for hacking. Clarke knows that he goes to see her every Sunday but he is not to return permanently.

Jasper – Jasper has a nice family. His mother is an accountant and his father is a college professor. They’ve got a house with white picket fence, Jasper has a younger sister, and they have a Labrador named Sparks.

It shouldn’t surprise Clarke that he doesn’t understand how humans can be sometimes, not like she can – her father dead because of her mother, in a way, and no one to turn to.

Miller’s brows are furrowed, permanent scowl etched on his face as he leans forward and addresses Clarke.

“Can we trust her?”

“I think so. Jasper trusts her.”

“Yeah, well,” Raven snorts, dropping whatever she’d been fiddling with in order to keep up with the conversation. “Look how that turned out.”

It’s Bellamy who speaks next, serious since the moment Clarke told them what had happened. He hasn’t said anything but his eyes are focused. “This is no time to be fighting. That’s exactly what they want – us to turn against each other.”

“But we can’t cooperate with someone who wanted Clarke to block her cluster out!” Monty protests, and Clarke is inclined to agree. Maya did the same, they all know that, but being without her cluster even if for a while – it’s taken its toll on Clarke, it has drained her of something important, something like the very essence of life.

You can’t live without your soul. And they are hers.

“We can if it’s the only thing we’re able to do. We _have_ to.”

“Alright,” Miller nods. “What’s the plan?”

Everyone turns to look at Clarke and she sees worry and panic mixing on their faces, something they want to keep carefully hidden for the sake of their soulmates. It only makes her more determined.

“We could give up Mt. Weather cluster.”

Jasper stands up, shaking his head wildly. “Absolutely not!”

“I wasn’t done. Or we could make it seem like we’re giving them up. Maya said that Tsing gave Cage a head-start but if we come first – with one of theirs, she’s not going to need us anymore. And if we make it seem like we’re there to give them up, well – it gives us a perfect excuse to-“

“Wreck them,” Raven finishes, grinning. She’s toying with her lighter now, something scary about the girl who resides on the South Pole for a living and blows things up for a hobby.

Clarke loves her.

“When?”

Clarke shrugs. “Maya said she could buy us time. I still don’t know how she is able to lie to Cage but they’re not as connected, not as we are. They are a cluster but they aren’t this close. We have as much as she can get us.”

Later that night, it’s Raven and Monty who stay with her. At first they talk shop – ways to get into the BPO facility near Washington, the closest one to Clarke and Maya, various strategies that would help both of them get out alive. It hasn’t been mentioned but it is a given that Clarke and Maya would be the ones to do it, when push comes to shove.

Bellamy wasn’t thrilled, not at all – Clarke could see the muscle in his jaw tick, storm brewing in his eyes as he left under the guise of having to go to work, but he didn’t squeeze her hand, didn’t brush her arm with his fingers in passing – he left, and even though she can reach out to him whenever she pleases, this feels strangely like a fight.

But there is no other option. Whoever goes to BPO, it will hurt all the same. They are soulmates and you can’t pick just one you love the least. You love everyone or you don’t love anyone.

When Raven, Monty and Clarke get tired of pretending like they’re even capable of talking about plans, the three of them curl up on Raven’s bed. It’s night, but the sky is as bright as if it were high noon. She read about it, seasons shifting in a manner none of them were accustomed to, long days and then long nights. A kingdom of absolute contrasts.

Through their eyes, Clarke can feel the places they exist in. All of them are corporeal enough when with each other, but there is always a paper-thin barricade separating their real bodies. Mind is a powerful tool but Clarke believes that nothing can compare to what it must feel like to actually touch them.

Still, it is close enough – Raven on her right and Monty on her left, the three of them forming a ball of intertwined limbs, heads leaning on heads and fingers laced through each other’s. When something happened, to any of them or to all of them, they would seek one another out – after Monty was almost caught, all of them made room in Miller’s living room and snuggled up to each other. It was breathtaking and it was heart-mending, to feel all of them connected in a way that helped them heal.

Monty nuzzles Clarke’s neck as she is carding her fingers through Raven’s hair, their movements languid and slow, so much comfort after so much hurt, and she knows she will do anything to keep them safe.

“What was it like?” she finally asks, voice barely louder than a whisper. “Meeting Miller?”

Monty raises his head just a bit, enough for her to see that his face lit up. They never talked about it, not with the rest of the cluster, but everyone could sense how much they seemed to become attached at the hip. They gravitated in each other’s orbits – if Monty moved, Miller did too, and vice versa.

“It was – I can’t describe it. It was a lot. I mean,” Monty blushes, making Raven chuckle against Clarke’s chest, the sound echoing in her ribcage and sending shivers down her spine. “We did everything before but even seeing Nathan – there, next to me – it was different, better. Like you turned up the volume to the maximum.”

“Is it still like that?”

“Yes. Every day, every second. There’s Nathan and there’s the rest of the world.”

Raven props herself up on her elbows, considering. The three of them are tangled and there really isn’t anything but them on the bunk – the smell of Raven’s hair, lemon and lime, Monty’s fluttering eyelids – the three melting into one.

“That’s really nice, Mont.”

Clarke’s eyes flicker to Raven, whose face is serious like she’d never seen it. The thing is, they all know almost everything about each other and they know about Finn, the one boy she loved unconditionally. Clarke knows what it feels like to have him look Raven straight in the eye and tell her that she’s his best friend but he’s in love with someone else. If she could live with that, he’d stay with her.

“But that’s not how I want to be loved,” Raven had said and Clarke knew that her soulmate’s heart shattered into pieces but her bones grew thicker and her soul stronger.

Now they love each other, in all the right ways, and Clarke doesn’t know if heaven exists but this is as close as it gets.

“Not saying that I’m going to pair up with Jas now,” Raven adds, much to everyone’s amusement. Their laughter echoes throughout the small room, cymbals of Clarke’s, deep and hearty – Raven’s and then Monty’s, small but so grand in how gentle it is in conveying brilliant emotions.

“We know you won’t, babe,” Clarke tells her, wrapping her arms around the brunette’s waist and pulling her closer. A girl made of sharp corners on the outside, sharp spikes that could prick your skin if you made one wrong move – and then nothing but love and courage inside.

In all honesty, they are all in love with each other and Clarke allows the feeling to wash over her until she is nothing else but the feeling of their intertwined hands and their hearts beating in harmony.

 

** March 2015 **

****

It’s easy to forget that they’re teetering on the edge of a precipice, dancing between everything and nothing, when Bellamy holds her hand as they walk down the pier and she’s laughing at something one of his students said.

“Not that I mind. It’s better that she told me that she doesn’t love history than bullshitting her way through essays,” he shrugs. “I appreciate honesty. But still – she said that history is boring and Clarke-“Bellamy looks desperate. “History is fucking fascinating!”

“Did you try telling her that?”

“Not in those words, no” he blushes, ducking his head as his hand darts to rub his neck. She loves Bellamy always, loves him when he’s smooth and elegant, all well-calculated charm – a means to an end. She loves him when he’s wearing his sweatpants and his glasses are crooked on top of his nose. But the fondness she feels for him when he’s blushing and bumbling – yeah, that’s her favorite.

“ _Why_ do you like history? Surely there’s something to make you so attracted to it.”

“Well, I was thinking poli-sci when I first got to college, but – history is everything,” he says and then takes a deep breath, looking at the sky and squinting when the light hits his eyes. “You are history, and so am I. Our present is defined by our past. Yes, we shouldn’t look into the past because that means we’re turning our asses to the future,” he stops to let her chuckle and she does, more out of sympathy than out of actually finding it funny but – it’s charming. “But who we are now – that’s defined by our past. Past is now and past is future, it’s all interwoven.”

That’s what she likes – she likes how he flails his arms when he’s passionate about something he’s talking about, so much he sometimes knocks the glasses off of his nose. He’s beautiful anyway, sharp jaw, deep brown eyes, dimples in his cheeks and in his chin (the one she likes kissing the most), constellation of freckles across his nose and his cheeks, curls that look permanently mussed up. Bellamy is beautiful, not in a way that can be described – it should be seen. But nothing can replace the fire in his eyes that sets his features aflame, sets who he is into a blazing torch you can’t look away from.

So she snuggles up against his side and smiles when his hand comes to rest on her waist. “That’s a beautiful way of looking at it.”

“It’s how I see it. But I can understand why Marilag doesn’t like it. This history is all about men being dramatic. And women are completely disregarded in it. There aren’t whole passages in high school textbooks devoted to the women who instigated the French Revolution. They are the ones who marched out into the streets and banged their drums, calling those who wouldn’t join the cause cowards. But as soon as the riots turned into an organized form of revolution, there were no places left for them.”

Clarke thinks of Maya – Maya who is just a girl but an army of one as well, finding Clarke and telling her that she would do anything to help them. She thinks of a girl who must often be ignored because she is soft-spoken and shy, but she squares her shoulders nevertheless and offers to march into battle.

Well, it’s always those we think of as the pawns that can completely change the game. Send one off to die and they’ll come back with bloodied teeth and enough nerve to grab you by the neck and threaten to ruin you.

“Give me agency or give me death,” she says, feeling his mouth curl into a smile against her shoulder. It’s a romantic way of thinking about it, something that doesn’t require you to face how horrible it must be to become a queen victorious – a trail of bodies in your wake. They all think about the strength you need to pull through but – Clarke doesn’t want to find out what it’s like killing someone to keep the ones you love safe.

So she turns to Bellamy and presses her lips against his, pulling them back into her apartment where her food’s gone cold and the clock ticks away different time entirely. She doesn’t want to think about brave citoyennes of Paris who marched into the streets and stormed Bastille, only to be left hanging afterwards – she doesn’t want to think about the possibility of the same happening to them.

Everything she wants to think about is Bellamy returning the kiss, the heat of their bodies pressed against each other and Monty’s words – seeing Nathan was like the volume was turned up to the maximum. Even now, even like this, she can feel Bellamy’s hands roaming over her body and her heart beats so loud everything else drowns in the sound of being alive.

 

Afterwards, they lie in bed, two castaways shipwrecked on a deserted island, and it’s easy to forget again – she’s telling him about her day, the patient she managed to save despite losing a lot of blood, about Wells who brought her his flask when her shift was over and she was too tired to even get herself home. They forget about the impending doom until she realizes that the date is in two months and he should probably know.

“May.”

Bellamy frowns at her, his hand ceasing movement where it was caressing down her spine, and she sighs. They always fight when she mentions it and she knows it’s because he can’t be there. He wanted to come, of course he did, Octavia even called her to tell her she should stop him from booking a plane ticket, but it was a risk. Clarke was the closest, and they could all share their abilities to help her if needed, but Bellamy couldn’t do anything except be there for her.

To him, it meant that he would get on a plane and make sure she’s physically alright. To her, it meant that he had to stay home, where he was safe. At least safer than she would be.

“We’re – Maya and I, we’re going to do it in May.”

His hand retracts immediately, his arms falling to his sides and his fists clenched as she watches him try not to lash out. She understands him – she’d want to do the same, but he has to understand that this is the best for the whole cluster.

“I suppose there’s no point in trying to talk you out of it?”

“You can try,” she smiles into his shoulder, planting a chaste kiss at the same spot where he’s got a cluster of freckles. “I like your methods.”

“I’m serious, Clarke. Maybe there is something we hadn’t thought of, maybe Raven can-“

“Maybe Raven can tell Monty exactly where he should cut off their power,” she finishes, flopping on her back to stare at the ceiling. “If there was something else, we would’ve thought of it already. There are four scientists in this cluster, did you forget that, Bellamy?”

“And a thief and a history teacher,” he sighs, the muscle in his jaw twitching. “I’m really fucking useful. Octavia would’ve been better for all of you, at least she can fight.”

“Like you can’t,” she scoffs, remembering the night when she was out with her friends and an asshole thought her ass was there for groping. Bellamy was there even before Miller and she was both Bellamy and Clarke when he smashed her fist into the stranger’s stomach, making him gasp for air.

“I can hold my own, yeah, but I’m no Octavia. All I’m saying is – what’s my purpose here? Raven is a brilliant scientist, Jasper is – well, he cooks up experimental drugs but alright, he can at least drug someone. Monty’s voted the most likely to hack into Pentagon or something, Miller can crack any safe in the world, you are an amazing doctor and fuck, I love your brilliant brain. I really do,” he flashes a small, watery smile. “But what’s my point? What do I do? Just stand there while the love of my life risks getting killed?”

Clarke huffs, irritated because he’s irritated – always feeling like he needs to do more than he actually can, more than he needs. She understands that but this isn’t a normal situation, this – no one should have to rethink their purpose.

Only months ago, they were a doctor, a chemist, an IT technician, a mechanic, a thief and a history teacher. Now they have to consider what qualifies them for a battle they shouldn’t be fighting in the first place.

“You hold down the fort. That’s what you do, Bellamy. You give us hope and you ground us when we’re up in the clouds. That’s what you are – you’re a leader, and I don’t know if that has anything to do with the amount of biographies on old emperors and kings you’ve read, but you – even just standing there and telling us that everything is going to be alright and that we can do it – that’s enough. That’s, actually, everything.”

Bellamy says nothing for a while, silence draped over them thick, like a fog clouding their mind in what should be a casual afternoon spent in bed – not one of the last few moments of calm before they plunge into turmoil.

(It feels like there is a clock ticking away in Clarke’s chest, counting the seconds before the battle begins.)

But then he turns to her, propped on his elbow to get a better view of her and she can’t fight off the smile that’s tugging on the corners of her lips. She just wants to have him look at her for the rest of her life, just wants to be able to do the same.

“I’m still not happy you’re doing this.”

“But you trust me.”

“But I trust you. And I’ll be there. Every step of the way.”

She kisses his collarbone, his eyelids fluttering when her lips ghost over the planes of her stomach, and she smiles into his thigh when he shivers.

“The love of your life, huh?”

He lets out a groan and there’s something unfurling in her chest, something that felt so heavy and the weight is still there but – Bellamy helps. Even having him close helps.

 

** May 2015 **

 

She wakes up to Jasper staring at her and she knows that it’s the fifteenth of May.

“Out with it,” she commands, getting up from her bed and tying her hair up in a bun on top of her head. She’s about to bring a worldwide organization down, her hair is the least of her worries.

Jasper is quiet as she dresses up – pants, flat shoes, jacket with enough pockets to fit a knife, her cellphone and a modem-like thing Monty sent her and she needs to drop somewhere within the complex.

He sounds like he’s been crying when he finally speaks, his voice hoarse and raw. “Please, stay safe.”

She was expecting him to attack her about Maya, their friendship – soulmate-ship – tentative at best during the last few months. At first, he wanted to help BPO – volunteer for the cause, thinking that that’d keep them alive. Even Maya couldn’t stop herself from telling him how naïve that was.

He still loves her, though. But he loves Clarke too and he is the one she met first – the connection that her body still remembers, the trembling and vibrating, like she was plugged into electricity and now there’s no blood – only positive and negative ions bouncing off of each other.

It felt so wrong not to have him near that she almost breaks out crying when he finally hugs her. He’s Jasper – he’s her soulmate and she loves him. She’s doing this for him the same as she’s doing it for all the others.

“I will, Jas, you know that,” she reminds him, pushing away a few stray locks falling into his eyes. He’s not wearing goggles anymore and his eyes lost the hope she used to see in them.

He’s growing up, all of them are. It hurts more than it should.

“You know I love you, right, Clarkey? I mean, I was an asshole – I know that – but I don’t want anything bad to happen to you.”

“God, you’re such a nerd,” she smiles and then he pecks her cheek, leaving her alone in her apartment as the smell of coffee envelops her.

She’s alone again but they are there. Every second of the day, she can feel her soulmates cheering for her and the sensation of knowing that you’re not lost in this world of six billion people, not left to your own devices – it’s everything she could have hoped for and more.

They fit and she wonders how she could have even lived without them in the first place.

Raven is talking animatedly, one hundred words per minute when Clarke is drawn to her room in the Chilean base. Her hands are all over the place, she’s frowning at her wrench and when she spills her coffee on the draft of BPO complex, she swears so loud someone comes knocking.

“You alright, Reyes?”

“Fuck off, Wick!” she shouts, muscles in her neck straining.

 “I thought I heard you talking to yourself.”

“That’s because I’m the only smart one around here and I get lonely with you idiots!”

Clarke’s eyebrows shoot up to her hair and Raven rolls her eyes. A male’s voice – Wick – is chuckling on the other side of the door but he leaves soon enough and the mechanic falls back on her chair, all vigor draining from her.

She looks up at Clarke, dark circles under her eyes, desperation written clear across her face. Clarke has Raven’s hands in hers when she finally speaks, tired.

“I just want you to know that I love you, Griffin. Please don’t get yourself killed.”

Coming from Raven, that’s the closest to a love statement she’s going to get and Clarke pulls her in for a hug that leaves both of them teary-eyed. Raven is the first one to snap out of it, brushing away the tears with her knuckles and clearing her throat.

“Monty and I are going to cut the power as soon as you make it to control room. Facilities like these – they always have a lockdown setting in case something happens. You and Maya just need to be somewhere safe when we launch the protocol and if we’re in luck, there might be a self-destruction option somewhere in there. Just don’t get caught and don’t get killed.”

“Make them think like we’re there to give up Mt. Weather cluster.”

“Exactly,” Raven nods. “If we can’t blow it to smithereens, maybe Monty can blow up the lab or ruin their equipment somehow – I don’t know. But we’ll do whatever we can.”

Raven sounds reassuring but Clarke doesn’t need it. She knows her soulmates; she knows that they will do whatever is in their power to stop this terror forevermore. The only difference is that no option is a good one, and if there’s a possibility of blowing them all up – Washington BPO complex containing the offices of the chief researcher and the general director – they’re going to take it.

But they can’t do anything until Clarke and Maya are in.

“So, who’s Wick?” Clarke waggles her eyebrows, trying to relieve the tension. They’ve only got a few moments of normalcy and they might as well use it.

Raven scowls. “A fucking engineer.”

“That you’re fucking or?”

She barely avoids the wrench Raven sends flying her way.

 

Monty and Miller are sitting together in a refurbished garage Clarke knows they live in now. It’s surprisingly clean and Miller scowls when she says as much.

“What’d you expect, a pigsty?”

“I’d never,” she says, mock-offended. “I just know you have better things to do than keeping everything tidy here.”

“Well I don’t want _Monty_ to think I’m a pig.”

“I already know you are, babe,” Monty grins and then swivels in his chair back to his computer screen, waving Clarke over.

She’s almost frightened to see how well Miller and Monty work together. Since he’s arrived in Marseille, there isn’t a plan he didn’t help Miller with. Their plans usually always end up with Clarke needing to patch them up in the middle of the night but they have silly, lopsided grins plastered across their faces and Monty may seem like a goody two-shoes but he lives for the thrill of barely making it out unharmed.

The stakes for this game are higher, however. The most that can happen to Miller or Monty in a night is getting arrested, but the price for Clarke’s hypothetical failure is all of them being tortured and killed.

“Alright, I know Raven talked to you already but I’m going to give you more info. You two are going to enter here,” he points his finger to the marked doors on his screen. “That’s the main entrance. You will be escorted to see Tsing whose office is right here. You’ve got about fifty feet to knock out the guard who’s going to take you to her and to make your way to the control room.”

“Easy-peasy.”

“When you’re there, you’re going to plant the device I sent you. You’ll see a big-ass computer and that’s where you’ll hook it up to.”

Miller laughs behind them and both of them glare at him, making him throw his hands up in surrender and stalk off to kitchen.

“Insolent brat,” Monty sighs, but there’s no heat to his words and Clarke has to smile. “Alright, hook it up to the computer and then let me do my magic. I’ll let you know as soon as I find something. But the two of you should exit here,” he points to a side-door. “There’ll be a car waiting for you out front. Courtesy of Miller.”

“I love you, Miller!” Clarke shouts, only to hear the man groaning.

“Basically – get in, knock out the guard, hook the device to the computer and get out.”

“Got it.”

Monty turns off his computer and turns to face Clarke again. “You can do this, Clarke. We can do this.”

“I know. I trust you.”

He nods, wrapping his arms around her as he stands up, and she buries her face in the crook of his neck. Miller’s there not a second later and she wonders if he even made it out of his kitchen for this, but then his skin is pressing against hers and she knows what they’re trying to say.

_Stay safe, we love you._

_I will_ , she wants to say, _and I love you too._

But they already know.

 

Bellamy is the last one she sees, mere moments before meeting Maya in front of BPO. Her hands are shaking on the steering wheel of a car she’d rented and then he’s sitting on the passenger seat, fiddling with the radio.

They sing along to a horrible song at the top of their lungs, kiss like a pair of teens at a red light and Bellamy laughs when she tells him a horrible pun.

When she parks the car out front, every last trace of happiness is gone and Bellamy’s hand on her thigh just feels heavy – a reminder of what she might never feel again. It takes her a lot of strength to look at him but when she does, his look is soft and his lips are curled into a smile.

She takes him in like she’s seeing him for the last time (oh, if she only knew) and smiles because even if it all goes up in flames, she’s happy to have met him – to have met all of them. It’s been brief eight months but they’ve felt like a whole lifetime.

No regrets, not a single one as she turns off the engine and twists her body so she can cradle his face in her hands, brush her thumb across his cheekbone and smile when he leans into the touch.

“When all of this is over, I’m coming to see you,” she tells him, watching his pupils dilate and enjoying in the effect her words have on him. And she means it. If she makes it out alive, the first thing she’s doing is getting on the plane to Manila.

“I’ll be waiting.”

She nods, pressing a chaste kiss to his lips before moving, her watch ticking away the minutes until she has to meet Maya. Her hand is gripping the door handle when his fingers wrap around her wrist and he pulls her in for a deeper kiss.

It’s everything he’s trying to say, and she feels it in the way he bites into her lower lip, his tongue ghosting over the roof of her mouth and then pressing against hers as their lips move in a rhythm they’ve known their entire lives.

I love you, I miss you, I’m not whole without you – it’s all of those things that are too big to be put into neat little containers of words. Syllables and consonants, nothing to describe what it feels like to have someone completing you in a way that doesn’t make you feel small and unimportant – but tall and broad and spanning the continents and time. It’s a singularity, Bellamy is a singularity – all the laws of physics break down for him. For them.

She loves him and he knows so he lets her go, but she feels his hand around hers as she makes her way to BPO.

“We’re here, everyone’s waiting. Clarke, you can do this.”

Maya greets her with a weak smile, and she tries to do the same but fails. She can’t, panic nearly paralyzing her body and it takes all of her strength not to scream out in the face of a guard who asks them why they’re there.

It’s Maya who speaks. “Maya Vie and Clarke Griffin to see Dr. Tsing. Tell her it’s about the cluster project.”

“You’re doing great,” Clarke hears Bellamy whisper in her ear and she loves him – loves him so much she could cry because he is doing what he does best – he is there for her and with him, it feels like there isn’t a battle she couldn’t win.

Sure enough, another guard comes over and tells them to follow him. Maya and Clarke exchange matching looks of determination and as soon as they go around the corner, no one else in sight, it’s Miller whose mind slips into Clarke’s body and he presses a hand to the guard’s mouth, delivering a jab to the side of his head.

The man folds backwards but Clarke/Miller catches him and Monty is there to alert them to a storage room two feet away. They tie him up and gag him, Maya making sure that the knots are tight enough and they slip away into the hallway.

“Alright, where to next?”

Monty leads them to the control room and Maya locks the door behind them as Clarke’s eye catches the sight of what definitely is a big-ass computer. It’s a server, she suddenly knows because she’s Monty and Monty is her, and her fingers instinctively find the right USB port.

“Is that Monty?” Maya asks, a smile fluttering on her lips and Clarke can’t find it in herself to despise her for being sent to spy on them. She’s much braver, much more honest than Clarke had thought and she returns the smile, nodding.

They wait, feet tapping at the marble floor, as the device loads into the server and then the options are displayed across all three huge LCD screens. Monty tells her to press ‘Load all data’ and she does it, a loading bar appearing and taking its sweet time.

Ten minutes pass and it’s at twenty percent. Maya is all nerves next to Clarke and she isn’t holding up well either, her nails digging into her palms as Bellamy tries to calm her down.

“This is great, Clarke,” he rubs his hands down her arms and she tries to keep eye contact with him but her mind is whirling so fast it nearly makes her dizzy. Ten minutes, ten minutes is enough for Tsing to realize that something is wrong and what if the guard woke up and alerted them and-

Bellamy’s voice grounds her. “Stop it. You are doing everything you can. It’s going to be alright.”

“Clarke,” Maya whispers, her eyes widening. “Someone’s coming.”

There is a sound of heavy footfalls coming from the hallway and she motions for Maya to duck under the small window in the upper corner of the door. They curl up on the other side, listening to the footsteps pausing on the other side and lingering for a while.

Then whoever it was leaves and Clarke lets out a shaky breath. Maya is still alert, and that’s when a heavy rumble drifts to their ears – multiple footsteps running across the hall, sturdy boots hitting the floor and making the control room vibrate.

“Get out!” a male’s voice shouts through the door and Clarke freezes. They know. They know they’re there. “Get out now!”

Maya shakes her head at the question in Clarke’s eyes and she scrambles to get up, careful not to be seen through the window. Clarke follows, crawling on all fours to a corner.

“What do we do?”

There has been no one else with them, only thoughts of her soulmates in Clarke’s mind – _you’re alright, we’re all so proud of you, we’re here to help_ – and then there is Raven, all fire and fight.

The loading bar is at seventy-five percent and Raven rummages through the cabinets. There’s nothing but files there, papers rustling in the wind as she scatters them across the room, searching for something.

“Fuck you, too!” she hisses as a sheet of paper sticks to her finger and she shakes it away.

“What are you doing, Raven?” Clarke finally asks, her foot tapping where she and Maya are waiting to be rescued. They are sitting ducks in this room and if they try to get out – both of them will die and BPO will still stand.

 “You’re fighting your way out,” she declares, slamming the doors of a closet with a triumphant smirk on her face. When Clarke takes a better look, Raven’s arms are full of air-fresheners and cleaning supplies.

The doors rattle as someone tries to break in, the shouting a constant reminder that they’re only minutes from their demise – if the door holds on until then. But Raven squats next to them, looking up only to tell Clarke to look for a gun, and Maya helps her go through the desks and cabinets until they emerge with a handgun. Loaded.

When Clarke realizes what Raven is trying to do with the cans taped to each other, she wants to kiss the brilliant mechanic.

“Get me that box,” she motions towards an empty box under a table, a piece of tape stuck to the corners of her lips and Maya throws it at her. She drops the taped cans into it, suddenly somber as she looks up at them.

Loading at eighty five percent.

The doors shake under the pressure of something heavy slamming into them and Maya steps back.

“Right. You’re going to say you’re coming out and then open the doors. Slide that box into the hallway, as far as you can. And, Clarke?” Raven asks, voice all steel and fury.

“Yeah?”

“Shoot the damn box.”

Loading at eighty seven percent as Raven stands up, wiping her hands on her pants and nodding – more to herself than to Clarke. “You can do this.”

“Thank you, Raven.”

She’s gone, replaced by Bellamy when there is nothing else to do except to hold Clarke’s hand. He’s rubbing soothing patterns into it as she shouts through the door, Maya’s eyes trained on the door.

“We’re coming out! Back away!”

 “You got ten seconds!”

Maya squeezes her hand briefly and stands behind the door as Clarke prepares the box in her left hand, and the gun in her right. The footsteps shuffle and Clarke chances a look through the window – there’s no one straight ahead, but she’s willing to bet there’s at least ten of them surrounding them from every side.

It happens as fast as lightning – Maya unlocking the doors and Clarke standing to the side as she slides the box into the hallway. Someone asks “What the fuck?” and then she’s propping herself up on her elbow and taking the shot.

The explosion burns the hairs on her arms and the tips of her hair as Clarke barely makes it out of the way of the gust of fire that arises along with a sound of detonation. There are people screaming in the hallway and she knows she should be feeling horrible but adrenaline is kicking in and somewhere far away, Raven is cheering for her, and she takes Maya’s hand, raises her from the floor and ushers her into the hallway.

There’s ash, walls black where the fire rose, and alarms are blaring – so high-pitched they make Clarke’s ears hurt, but she runs forward, tugging Maya along and they stumble towards where Monty is leading them. She knows he’s talking but she can’t hear it, not exactly – there’s static and then something faint, like a human voice, through it.

Blood is trickling down her jaw and Maya has a nasty cut over her brow but they make it to the end of hallway.

“You’ve got this, Clarke, just a little bit – loading is at ninety-seven,” Monty tells her and she thanks him in her thoughts because her arms are struggling with pushing the side doors open but they won’t budge.

“Monty! Monty – the door, the door!”

She’s clutching and shaking the door handle but nothing happens. Maya is tensing her muscles next to her and then Monty is Clarke and Clarke is Monty.

They turn towards the other doors – glass ones, and Maya presses her palms on them, trying to push. Nothing happens, again, but the loading is at ninety-nine and it’s a second – they just need a second to get in and then they’ll be free.

A woman appears on the other side of the glass doors, olive skin and dark stare that commands attention. Her mouth curls up into a smirk when she sees them and it’s only on a purely instinctual level that Clarke knows the woman is Lorelai Tsing.

Maya turns her back to the woman and looks at Clarke. It would almost be a normal, panicked ‘what are we going to do’ look but it isn’t. There is something inexplicable in Maya’s eyes as Clarke’s stomach plummets and she knows what the girl is about to do.

“Maya! No, Maya, don’t! We can fight them!”

The doors slide open and it’s Bellamy next to her as Maya speaks, loud enough for Clarke to hear but not for Tsing.

“You need time, Clarke. I’ll distract them. Do what you need to do.”

“What the hell is she doing?” Bellamy growls, Clarke feeling him tensing up next to her as her breath gets knocked out of her lungs. Maya walks backwards towards Tsing and a group of people in hazmat suits in short, calculated steps.

“Maya! Maya, stop!”

Her voice feels nothing, nothing at all and she’s frozen in her tracks as Maya smiles at her one last time, face frozen in an expression of remorse that only shows kindness to Clarke but she can’t move – she’s still there and Maya is walking backwards into the very ones they need to destroy.

“None of us are innocent, Clarke.”

Clarke is transfixed looking at Maya who walks into the hazmats and Tsing with a small smile on her lips. It’s everything she can see – the way Maya looks peaceful, almost as if she had come to terms with the hands looking to subdue her.

And then they stun her. The smile on her lips disappears, replaced by a grimace of pain so raw Clarke can almost feel it. Maya’s body twists forward, convulsing as the glass doors slide closed in front of Clarke and she can’t move.

Maya is falling, falling, falling and then her body hits the floor with a thud Clarke can only feel. Like a rag doll, Maya’s expression still twisted into the sick grimace of piercing pain as she lays motionless, limbs askew and hair strewn on the floor.

Tsing rounds her, the way she looks at Maya revolting – as if she is admiring her new acquisition. She finally nods at Clarke, motioning for the hazmats to pick up Maya. They are leaving down the same hallway and Maya’s legs trail behind them as they drag her.

 

 “Clarke! Clarke, we need to go!”

She moves, doesn’t know how she does it because Maya just sacrificed herself and she still remembers every muscle in the girl’s body contorting under the pain she shouldn’t have suffered.

How can anything matter now that they can’t get her out, they can’t because she knows that Raven found out that they have a protocol for self-destruction and it’s the best thing they can do now – blow it all up.

Maya looked so small and so big, surrounded by green suits and sacrificing herself but the image of her face grimacing in pain and then the flashes of how peaceful she’d looked just seconds before is permanently etched into Clarke’s mind and she knows that she’s never going to forget it.

“What do we do, Clarke?”

She snaps out of it because Monty sounds panicked and Bellamy is begging her to come back, pulling at her arm. They are still her cluster, her soulmates, and this is what she is doing to keep all of them safe. It’s not the best choice, but it’s the only thing she can do.

Clarke looks at Bellamy and he squeezes her hand, his jaw tight with pain barely contained. “Together.”

He melts into her as she sits behind the wheel and it’s his calmness that gets them out of the parking lot, Maya’s silent screams still echoing in Clarke’s ears and making Bellamy wince as he drives them away.

“Clarke, tell me, right now!” Monty begs, sitting in the backseat suddenly and leaning forward, one hand grasping the headrest on Clarke’s seat.

Bellamy looks at her again, nods again and she is a monster – she is a monster that ruins everything good. It’s her fault – all of this; Monty nearly getting caught, Maya who is going to be dead in less than two minutes.

“Blow it up,” they say in unison – her voice mixing with his but Bellamy being there doesn’t make it any less horrible.

When the building behind them erupts into flames, the detonation strong enough to make the asphalt below them shake and their car to come to a stop, Clarke can only see Maya – clear as daylight in her mind.

Rubble is raining from the burning building and this is how Clarke becomes a destroyer of the worlds. This is how she lets Maya die for them – allows her to slip away from her grasp and stands idle as the girl’s body goes up in flames.

They are alive but barely. To call it a victory would be an abomination.

 

* * *

 

 

They are all in her apartment when she drives back and Bellamy holds her hand, knowing just as well as she does that they’re devastated and – in Jasper’s case – furious. Monty is shifting his weight uneasily, Miller’s hands firm in their pockets (something unusual for them), and both of them are averting their gazes.

No one wants to look her in the eye. Well, Clarke isn’t surprised. She isn’t because she wouldn’t want to meet her eye either, not after what she had done. Not after Maya died for them. And that was her fault.

“How could you, Clarke?”

Bellamy’s grip tightens but she wiggles her hand out of it and steps forward, towards where Jasper is pacing across her living room. Tears are streaming down his cheeks, his nose is red and his eyes bloodshot when they peer into hers.

He’s the only one who can look at her and it is only because fury is boiling in his blood. She feels it, multiplied by her own hatred of herself.

“She’s dead because of you, Clarke!” he shouts. “Maya is dead because of you! Did you know that I felt her die? You want me to tell you what that’s like?”

Clarke remembers Maya’s face, her body lit up in pain, electricity bursting through her every nerve, and the quiet scream that paralyzed Clarke. 

Bellamy steps in front of Clarke, uncalled for, unnecessary – Jasper is right. It is her fault and the least she can do is listen to him. The choice of words she has for what she did is worse than anything Jasper could say.  

“ _Jasper_ ,” Bellamy warns, voice somewhere between a growl and a whisper.

But Jasper is a hurricane in a man’s body, ferocious tears running down his cheeks and every muscle in his body tense. He is on a warpath and no one can stop him.

“I felt her life draining out of her, Clarke! The pain wasn’t the worst, and even that was horrible – thousand knives twisting in your gut!” he clutches at his stomach, digs his fingers into his skin and stabs. Stabs repeatedly until he sees that she is hurt. “The worst was what came just after – nothing. She felt so alone and so abandoned until she wasn’t – until she wasn’t anything anymore! I felt her die and don’t tell me that’s not on you!”

Monty is quietly crying next to him, curled up in an armchair, and Raven’s face is drained of all color – eyes bleary and unblinking as she stares straight ahead. She looks broken, but not that sort of broken you can fix with enough affection. It feels permanent, a crack in a perfect tile that never closes – no matter how much you try.

Clarke feels how tired they are, how desperate and how desolate they feel their souls to be.

She doesn’t have one anymore. Not after this.

“You’re right,” she finally says, Jasper only inches from her and only Bellamy’s hands stopping him from attacking Clarke. “It _is_ my fault.”

Everyone is expecting her to say something but there isn’t anything that she could say or do to make it better.

She loves them and her heart is bleeding into her chest as she opens a drawer and retrieves a bottle of blue pills, the same ones Maya gave her. She loves them and her soul is composed of five amazing parts and one murderous, one bloody and bruised.

The best thing she can do is to let them all go. Let them go and let them be happy because no one could ever find a way to start again with a murderer in their mind.

“What are you-“Raven sputters, squinting at her until her eyebrows shoot up in her hair and she shakes her head wildly. “Don’t you dare! Clarke Griffin, don’t you dare take that pill!”

Bellamy lets go of Jasper and steps closer, eyes wide and terror coloring his expression upon seeing what she has in her palm. Raven is screaming at her, scrambling to get to her but she can’t – not if Clarke doesn’t let her. They are in her mind, they are in her reality and this time, they don’t get to do what they think is right.

She knows better – she knows that nothing will ever be right as long as she’s with them. They are the innocent ones, and her hands drip red with blood she will never be able to wash off.

“Clarke.” Bellamy’s voice breaks and she avoids his gaze, grabs a glass of water and washes the pill down with it. He tries to take it from her but not even he can touch her anymore. “Clarke, don’t do this.”

Everyone else is fading away – the vein in Monty’s neck pulsing as he shouts at her, eyes wet with tears, Miller furious next to him. Jasper is quiet – unmoving, unblinking as his features turn to grey and then dissipate. Raven is gone next and it’s pity Clarke sees on her face.

Bellamy lingers, voice quieter but still there. It makes sense that he should be the last one to leave her.

“What are you doing?” he begs of her, trying to reach out to touch her hand but failing. The sight of his hand going through hers makes his jaw tighten and then Clarke sees the tears welling in his eyes.

She breaks things, breaks people and smashes them into tiny bits that can never be glued together again. That’s what she does.

“This cluster was my responsibility, Bellamy. And look how I failed you all,” she says, trying not to sound like her heart is breaking. But it is. She still has it and it’s still breaking as her reality dims, turns blurrier.

She barely makes it to the couch and collapses on it, Bellamy’s hands leaning just where they’d be able to touch her waist. They can’t anymore and it’s only seconds until he leaves.

“We did that together, Clarke. Whatever it is you think you’re responsible for – we all are. You and I are. Together.”

His eyes are wide and pleading, constellations on his cheeks the one thing she carves into her mind as a morbid souvenir of a love she could have had, but he has no idea what he’s talking about.

“Take care of them for me, Bellamy.”

A second passes and he’s gone, nothing but a faint whisper of his name in the air. But she is tired and her eyelids are heavy – her soul is heavy, now one sixth of it, and her body gives up.

She falls asleep and she dreams of everything.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for reading and please let me know what you've thought of this. I hope I didn't overwhelm you with too much action as compared to the last chapter.
> 
> In any case, thank you for reading and please remember the dynamic duo: kudos & comments, if you liked it! :)


	3. Pyrrhic Victory

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is how they survive.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm a little (read: a lot) emotional about this coming to an end. I can only hope you will like the chapter that follows because the comments you left surprised me, flattered me and, ultimately, humbled me. This is why I do what I do - I love writing, that's at the bottom of it, but it's wonderful to see that someone else actually _likes_ it. 
> 
> So thank you, and this one goes out to all of you who've read this fic, who've commented and made me smile with your lovely words. Thank you, and I hope you enjoy it!

She sleeps and when she sleeps, she dreams of Maya and Jasper. Both feel like red-hot pain that makes her gasp for air once she wakes up. Being awake is even worse – every second clouds her mind, clouds her vision until she can only see blurry outlines of things surrounding her. Memories are distant and far but they still hurt, somewhere in that gaping hole where her soul once stood.

Two days pass before she hears her door unlocking and Wells sighs when he sees her, still lying on the couch in the clothes she hadn’t changed since she left BPO. There isn’t much to do except for sleep and lie motionless, watching the day and night shift, red and blue lights streaming across her ceiling as life goes on but she’s stuck in blank space.

“Oh, Clarke.”

He helps her up and manages to get her into the shower, holding her all the while as she sobs into his shirt. By the time he has her in a fresh set of clothes he’s soaked through and through. He makes her something to eat and she chews it absent-mindedly in the middle of her bed with curtains closed because light hurts her eyes and the only thing people like her are allowed is darkness.

She cries as she tells him what happened and he rubs her back, making her feel like a child who should be doing something – anything, but she can’t move.

“You did what you had to do,” he assures her but it’s weak and he’s saying it only to make her feel better. “Where’s your cluster? Are they here?”

Then he sees the pills on her nightstand and he’s furious by the time he reads the label. “You’re _high_?”

“Blocking them out.”

“Do you have any idea what this shit is going to do to you?” he exclaims, shaking the bottle in his right hand, his brows furrowed and a deep wrinkle setting between them. “This is going to ruin you.”

It feels stupid to say that she’s already ruined but even if she wanted to, she doesn’t have the strength. She just flops back on her bed and the last thing she remembers before drifting off to sleep is Wells covering her and promising he’d be back tomorrow.

Clarke sleeps and stirs, haze in her mind still too thick to move without Wells’ help. He talks to her about his life, tells her he told the hospital she’s sick and she wonders how is it possible that she got all of these wonderful people in her life who want to do things for her even if she’s a murderer.

One pill a day keeps her soulmates away and sometimes she can almost hear them scratching at the corners of her mind but the drugs are strong enough to produce hallucinations and so that must be it. Wishful thinking. If she could go back in time and think of something else, another way to keep them safe – she would.

But even if this world is miraculous and full of possibilities you don’t know of until you see them right in front of you, without her soulmates it feels small and confined to the dark corners of her room.

Her phone rings until the battery drains, numbers from all around the world. Clarke stares at the screen flashing blue and white and laughs bitterly when she realizes how morbid Pharrell Williams’ Happy sounds when the calls she’s getting are from her soulmates.

They shouldn’t be calling her but she lets them – doesn’t pick up, just stares at the dial codes signifying France, Chile, the Philippines. She comes up with stories about them – Monty and Miller walking down a promenade in Marseille, sun high in the air and Monty’s cheeks red from the heat. Raven laughing as her co-worker, the engineer Wick says something stupid. Bellamy and Octavia –

Bellamy and Octavia are the ones who hurt the most. Clarke doesn’t stop thinking about him, about a smile that could light up the entire world and he thinks it’s the plainest thing in the world. About his eyes – home, his arms – her front door, Bellamy in everything that he is – nothing short of a universe created in the deepest, darkest pits of despair and confusion.

He hurts when she remembers the pitch of his laughter, deep and throaty, rumbling like a thunder far above and bringing images of deep, dark soil you want to walk barefoot on to her mind.

The burn of missing him leaves her fingertips charred and she’d give anything to be worthy enough of feeling his fire again.

Octavia texts her sometimes. It may be Bellamy’s doing but Clarke still reads them, leaves her phone on the charger for them after everyone else stops calling.

_What the hell, Clarke?_

_Clarke, I know. Please talk to Bell._

_We are worried about you. Everyone. Please call me._

_Clarke, you need to call someone – anyone. It’s been two weeks._

_*eggplant emoji* *alien emoji*_

_No? Can you just tell me if you’re alright? Bell’s driving me crazy._

_We had Pancit Malabon for lunch today. It’s rice noodles cooked in anato seeds and topped with seafood. You would’ve liked it._

_Marilag wrote the best essay on the suffragette movement in the class today. –B_

_I miss you. –B_

_Bellamy isn’t going to stop, Clarke. He loves you, they all do. I’m worried about him and I’m worried about you._

It goes on like that. Clarke never responds but she cries, choking on the sobs constricting her throat and heavy tears falling to her pillow as she reads about their lunches, a man Octavia met, about Bellamy spending the night curled up in his bed with a biography of Julius Caesar.

It’s small, it’s simple but Clarke at least knows that they are there – they are safe and they are alive.

Octavia sends her one text per day. Sometimes it’s a single sentence, sometimes it’s an essay.

_Clarke! I’ve just returned home from that date I told you about. With Lincoln. He is amazing. He’s an artist, too – you’d love him, he can talk about art for hours and I love hearing him talk. I think this is it, Clarke. I think he might be it for me._

Clarke doesn’t respond but for a reason she can’t understand, Octavia still texts. There are never photos, nothing that would cause her heart to implode in her chest upon seeing a face that looks so much like Bellamy’s, and maybe Octavia understands.

When her body gets used to the effects of the drugs she’s taking almost religiously – every day at the exact same time, sometimes two if she feels them close, the first thing she does is goes to her father’s grave.

If Jake were there, Clarke would know what to do. But he isn’t and the closest she can get to him is sitting in front of the tombstone that carries his name and has his picture on it but it’s not him. Still, it’s something.

Her vision isn’t blurry anymore, her mind is almost capable of working like it did before, but she still feels weak. Most days, only the walk from her bedroom to her kitchen wears her out. Melancholy, the way her hands can’t seem to hold onto anything and her purse clatters to the floor as she tries to get on the tube. Pathetic, the tears that stream down her cheeks because her mind is getting better and the pain of separation is getting worse.

She is a monster but there are days when she almost forgets, almost detaches from herself and allows herself to dream about her soulmates’ lives – much happier now that she’s gone.

Jake’s grave is clean and there’s a fresh bouquet of daisies in the vase. Her father is a collection of good memories, jokes that could brighten her day when she was at her worst, loving arms in which she felt protected from the world – she misses him. She misses him like hell and she doesn’t know what she could have done to become this monster whose skin is now her skin, biting and scratching at her from within – every second of her waking hour spent in a desperate attempt not to give in and give up.

“Hi, dad,” she says, smiling weakly at his photo. He’s frozen in the middle of a smile he had until the day he lost the war against his cancer. He’d been winning battles, but he lost the war.

If she tries hard enough, she can almost imagine him sitting down on the grass next to her, asking her what’s wrong.

“I messed up,” she sighs, wrapping her arms around her calves, eyes trained on her dad’s photo. “I don’t know where you are but I’m guessing you’ve got a pretty good view. So you know what happened. A girl died to keep me and my-“she chokes on the words, because there is only one word she can use. Only one word that describes perfectly what they are to her. “soulmates safe. Her name was Maya and I hated her at first. She was sent to spy on us, dad, and I don’t know if you can imagine how much I love those people but – it’s a lot. It’s a whole lot and I’d do anything to keep them safe.”

The sun is slowly setting beyond a hill and Clarke breathes. This is the clearest her mind has been in days and her dad is the only one who can understand it.

“So my soulmates are safe. But Maya is dead. They’re saying it was a malfunction of the system in the news but – dad – that was our doing. That was my doing. Maya is dead because of me and she’s only the one that hurts the most. There were a hundred and fifty people in that building, people with someone who loved them, people with dreams and hopes – _people_ – and they are gone because of me.”

She doesn’t get answers, the wind is still nothing but a breeze, bringing no news from the other side or from her father, but she feels better. It’s only a nuance, but it’s good to tell someone. She wouldn’t have to talk to her dad if she hasn’t been blocking out her cluster but they are too involved – their connection too innate, too painful.

If she stayed with them, they’d have to feel what she feels. And she feels guilt. She feels remorse and she feels fury for having to do it in the first place.

The worst thing is – she doesn’t do anything about it. After the sun sets and the wind picks up, she dusts her jeans off and walks back home, avoiding people and stopping only to buy groceries in the corner store.

In a different life, she would be tired by now – her pager beeping incessantly, her scrubs coated with blood and eyelids so heavy they threatened to shut and never open again. For a while it made her heart beat faster, adrenaline kicking in during that one moment where she wasn’t sure if she could get up again.

Her heart rate grew, something snapped her awake and she was back on her feet. Alive. Tired, but alive.

Now she’s just tired, in an apartment that seems empty without the people she loves – without Miller scowling when someone besides Monty calls him Nate, without Bellamy playing with the ends of her hair absent-mindedly, Raven’s feet propped up in her lap and Jasper heckling the sucky football players on the TV.

It seems empty and she doesn’t exactly feel alive.

 

****

****

** June 2015 **

 

Time passes, Wells gets engaged, Clarke’s mother stops calling and everyone goes on with their lives. Clarke stays up during the night – her nightmares started including people she only imagined were in BPO that day and when she wakes up she sees red wherever she looks.

The first time that happened she had a panic attack – curled up in the middle of her bed, heart beating so rapidly she could hear her blood coursing in her ears, gasping for breath as something heavy pressed on her chest. Everything was too much and she remembers her fingernails digging into her sheets, mouth opening and closing without air coming in, eyes boggling in a desperate fight for survival.

The next time she had that nightmare, she practically threw herself out of her bed and dug through her closet until she emerged with a canvas and a box of spray cans.

She loved sketching but this felt angry, this felt violent and the only thing she could do to throw it out was scream at the canvas as her hands made swift, angry strokes of red on the backdrop of white.

When she was done, she all but passed out in her living room, but something had shifted.

Wells bought her real cans of paints next time he came over and so she did what she could – she painted whenever the nightmares woke her up, dark circles permanently etched on her face, until she could no longer dream when she slept, how tired she was.

The pain of separation from her cluster hadn’t ebbed. It should have, by all means – pain should do that, it should trickle away until there’s nothing but a faint remembrance of it. Not with them, though. She could still remember all of them, their idiosyncrasies – Jasper fixing his goggles when he was nervous, Raven sweeping the crumbs off of the table when she felt awkward in a conversation, Miller leaving open cans of Coke on her kitchen counter. They still felt real.

Then came the pills – even more of them. One per day didn’t mean anything – it blocked them out, disabled Clarke’s psycellium, but her mind wasn’t wrapped in mist anymore and as long as it was she didn’t have to think, she could pass out. So she took two, ate only when she really had to, shooed Wells when he started telling her that she’s going to kill herself and everything was going great – guilt and pain fainter in her stupor, until she hears a knock on her door one day in late June.

Wells doesn’t knock – Wells has keys.

She freezes, her heart thrashing against her chest like it knows something she doesn’t, and she tries to control her breathing until whoever it is leaves.

But they don’t. They keep knocking for at least twenty minutes and then she finally gives up – shoves away the covers on her bed and stumbles to the door. Her legs are wobbly, her hands are shaking and she used to be a good doctor but now she’s not even a good human.

“Coming,” she hisses, grabbing onto the doorknob and turning the key twice. The hallway is all black and blue and there is smoke – maybe somewhere beyond her eyelids. Everything is a surreal dream and everything hurts.

She opens the door, still clutching the knob for support, and her breath is knocked out of her chest like a punch.

He is suddenly the clearest thing in a maelstrom of shadows and vague outlines where her life should be. He is as clear as the daylight she hadn’t seen in days and seeing him is like being plunged into ice-cold water, only to emerge galvanized. It is as if every nerve in her body is lit on fire; red hot longing and venom uncoiling in her body.

Nothing compares to this, nothing she’d ever felt, and she only looks at Bellamy – three feet apart, both frozen in shock.

“Clarke?”

She nods, what a stupid little thing but it suddenly seems so big and he brings his hands to her face, electricity crackling between them. His eyes search her face for a sign, for something, and this time she can’t know instantly what he’s feeling but she has a pretty good idea.

A smile is threatening to appear on her lips and it’s bittersweet, his face only inches from hers, because she loves him and she left him.

“You’re sick,” Bellamy finally says. “What happened?”

“I’m not-“ she tries but fails, sighing. It takes too much energy, talking. “Come in.”

Bellamy follows her as they make their way through the hallway into the living room and steadies her when her knees buckle under her. With each passing second, he only looks more and more worried until she motions towards the bottle on the coffee table.

“Oh. They make you feel like this?”

Clarke nods and watches as his features soften, concern not replaced but strengthened with fondness. She may be high and she may be hallucinating but her body is wound so tight, wanting to get as close as possible to him – melting, if it’s an option, and he sits on a safe distance from her.

Of course, she sees his fingers twitch, his feet tapping against the floor and the speed of his eyes as he observes her but tries not to be obvious. It’s Bellamy. It’s Bellamy and she just can’t worry, she just can’t be sad or be anything anymore.

He finally stands up, wiping his palms on his pants and turns to her. Everything about him is tentative and careful, and she wants to shout that she’s not going to bite him – she is his _soulmate_.

“Would you like something to eat?”

Clarke scoffs. “Not going to ask me?”

“Ask you what?”

“May.”

Bellamy lets out an exasperated sigh and returns to the couch, this time close enough to rest his hands on the tops of her thighs, thumbs already rubbing patterns into them in what is soothing enough she could almost purr.

“Look at you, Clarke,” he breathes out. “You need rest and not my questions. I will ask them later if necessary. Right now you need what you need. Food?”

She shakes her head, her heart swelling and – oh, she thinks, it’s still there. It still knows how to do this.

“You.”

Bellamy chuckles, winding his arm under her shoulders as he helps her up. She’s still weak, still stumbling, but they make it to her bedroom and he puts her down on the bed.

It should feel different but it doesn’t – this is exactly where he belongs, right next to her on the bed, his chest rising and falling under her head and his legs intertwined with hers.

They don’t talk because there is too much they have to talk about but she doesn’t want to. He probably doesn’t want to either.

Hours pass like that, reclined on her bed and Clarke soaking up his warmth. She could always feel him, unless she chose not to, but this is different. There is nothing separating them now, and if she could melt into his touch she would.

She’s dozing off, happy, when he speaks into the silence of her room.

“She’s alright.”

It takes her a while to realize who he’s talking to and then her stomach plummets because they’ve all got to be there but she can’t see them – she can’t talk to them. Her soulmates – and she will never call them a cluster again – are just inches from her and she can’t even _feel_ them.

“I’ll tell her, yeah,” Bellamy smiles in the direction of her closet. She’s still pretending to be asleep – she doesn’t want them seeing her when she can’t see them. When she pushed them away and blocked them out.

With Bellamy by her side, his shirt soft under her cheek and his fingers caressing her hip – it feels like she made a mistake. And she knows she did – there was just nothing else to do.

Clarke falls asleep thinking about what they must be feeling and it’s a shot in the dark – there is no way to know. She dreams about Maya, but not screaming and thrashing – smiling like a brilliant midday sun. Somehow, that’s even worse.

When she wakes up her bed is cold and Bellamy is not there. Her heart beats like a war drum as she stands up and all but sprints through the door. The effects of the drug are wearing off but she doesn’t care – she can’t be stuck in the fog forever, she needs to talk to him, needs to make him understand.

But he’s not there and she throws open the doors to her kitchen in blind panic.

Bellamy is going through her fridge, frowning at a jar of pickles. “How can you eat this crap?”

She can’t believe that she didn’t notice his accent earlier – melodic, stumbling over the vowels just a bit, but mellifluous. She likes it – it’s very like him, reminiscent of the heat he radiates.

“I thought you were gone,” she presses out, still trying to regain her breath. “I thought you left. I-“

Bellamy is at her side in a second, grasping her hands in his as she blinks, tries to flutter away the tears prickling at her eyes. She was so scared and she still feels the terror of waking up and not seeing him there.

“I’m right here, Clarke. Right here.”

She nods into his shoulder when he embraces her, feeling so small and so shitty because she can’t even function properly anymore – she just paints, gets high (or low – really, the drug makes her feel low) and eats when she absolutely has to.

Maya should be alive right now, not Clarke.

“I heard you talking to them last night,” she tells him after they’ve had dinner. He insisted that he cooks and Clarke had to admit that chicken adobo was the best thing she’d ever had.

“They wanted to know how you are,” he shrugs. “Can you blame them? I mean, Monty hacked into the hospital you work for to see if you’ve been coming to work, but. You weren’t.”

“Yeah, I’m not much of a doctor these days.”

“Is it the drugs?”

She scoffs, picking at a loose tread on her t-shirt. “Not just them. They’re – I could handle them. I just don’t see the point.”

“In working?”

“In anything.”

Bellamy sighs, leaning over the table, hands clasped. He looks tired and she knows that he must be – he came all the way here only to have to take care of a human wreck.

“I know you feel guilty, Clarke. What we did – because _we_ did it, not just you – it’s not easy. But it wasn’t easy for us to come to terms with it without you. I know it must’ve hurt like hell to block us all out because it hurt us, too.”

“It was for the best.”

“Yeah, in what reality? We were supposed to stick together, survive that _together_. Not apart.”

“You really think you could come to terms with it, all of you, seeing what I dream about and what I think about? Because Maya’s death was my fault. I just stood there and watched them drag her away! I just stood there!”

She doesn’t know at what point she stood up from the table, but the chair is on the floor and Bellamy is eyeing her as if she’s a ticking time bomb.

It only spurs her anger further, white hot fury bringing tears to her eyes because he doesn’t understand what he’s talking about. He loves her, they love her but she can’t be loved. They deserve someone better.

“Stop looking at me like that! Because you have no idea – you have no idea what I did! You might’ve been with me in that car, you might’ve said we’ll do it together but if anyone should have saved Maya – that was me. And Jasper was right, I didn’t do anything! So don’t tell me I’m not a monster, don’t tell me that you wouldn’t be better off without a monster in your cluster!”

“That’s what you think you are?” he scoffs, incredulous look in his face. “A monster?”

“That is what I am, Bellamy. And I sure as hell don’t want you all to have to see it every fucking day!”

“You’re fucking incredible,” he says, voice dripping with bitterness, crossing his arms at his chest and staring at her. “ _You’re_ a monster? _You_ didn’t do anything to stop it? Like I couldn’t have done something – like any of us couldn’t have made you shake out of it and get her out? If that was possible. But you know it as well as I do – as well as everyone else knows – that it was impossible. She bought us time, Clarke!”

“I survived and she didn’t! She was the one who should’ve survived!” Clarke shouts, whirling around to face away from him, even if every cell in her body just want to get closer – not farther.

But there he is, sitting in her kitchen and insisting that there was no other way. It didn’t change the fact that she watched Maya die – that she let her die. Maya was innocent. Clarke isn’t. And no matter how many times she scrubs her hands, she’ll never be able to get the blood off.

It’s on her.

“Do you want forgiveness, Clarke?” he finally asks, after none of them have said anything for a while – her hands white from clutching the counter as she battles herself and the need to swallow him whole just to get closer, just to get warmer.

“Because – fine, I’ll give that to you. You’re forgiven. And now just come back. Please. Because we can’t do this without you.”

“I can’t do that,” she whispers, her voice cracking. “I can’t be who you want me to be. I – I don’t know how to be anything but this.”

Clarke turns around, meeting the sad look in his eyes she wants to kiss away but can’t. It would feel like a sacrilege to taint him – taint anyone – with the deep and dark cracks in her soul.

“I tried to be the good guy, Bellamy.”

“There are no good guys and bad guys here, Clarke. There’s just us, doing what we have to do,” he tells her, crossing her kitchen in a long stride to rest his forehead on hers. “I know it hurts but let us help. Let _me_ help.”

Clarke thought that being dead is the most alone you could feel, but she was wrong. Being without her soulmates is worse.

She nods, a small, almost imperceptible nod. “I promise I’ll try.”

Bellamy smiles, his hand sliding up into her hair and pressing her closer. She feels his voice on her skin, feels the curve of his lips. “That’s good enough.”

Clarke kisses him, careful, and she understands what Monty was talking about. The sensation of his lips on hers, the way their rhythm reminds of a melody – it’s loud. It’s so loud it makes her skin hurt and her heart grow too big for her ribcage. It’s so loud and it’s purifying – there is nothing else in the world except for the two of them.

And that’s how she remembers it; the overhead lights in her kitchen flickering above them, the way she laughs when he settles in the cradle of her hips and the cold tiles under her back that can’t cool her skin, set on fire.

She remembers laughing and smiling so much her cheeks started hurting, but it was a good kind of hurt – the one that makes you remember the things worth fighting for. Things worth living for.

He’s the one she’d fight for and live for. He’s the one who is lying in her arms and staring at the ceiling, cheeks flushed and lips swollen. She did that, she is the cause for the joy she sees in his eyes when he turns to look at her.

“Can I come with you?”

He frowns in confusion and she smooths out the crease between his brows. “Where?”

“Manila.”

He looks younger when his face lights up, dimples in his cheeks and freckles dancing in the pale light morning light. “You’d really like that?”

There isn’t anything else she’d like more.

“Yes.”

“Yes,” he repeats, props up on his elbow to take a better look of her. His curls are messier than usual and she loves him for the fervor, for the sun’s brilliance that seeps through his skin. “Yes, absolutely.”

 

**

 

Octavia greets her with her arms wide open and pats her hair as she cries when they finally make it to their apartment. Manila is even hotter than Boston, humidity makes Clarke’s hair go frizzy as soon as she steps out of the plane but Bellamy is smiling at her like she’s the best thing he’s ever seen and she has to try. She has to try – for him, for them.

“Thank you for everything, Octavia,” she finally tells her, wiping away the tears that won’t stop coming because this girl – this girl who isn’t her soulmate – sent her texts and made sure that she knows that someone is out there, someone who wants to help.

Octavia is not her soulmate but when she smiles at her – so much Bellamy in the gesture – Clarke thinks that maybe she was wrong, maybe there are seven parts of her – not only six.

“You think you’re the first basket case we’ve had over?” she snorts and brushes away the rest of Clarke’s tears. “Come on, we’ll get you back on track.”

And they do – they do. They never push, knowing instantly when something is too much. Clarke feels guilty for making them tiptoe around her but they roll their eyes in unison when she mentions it and tell her to shut up.

She can’t stop smiling when Octavia breaks into a song while she’s cooking and her muscles hurt after Bellamy does his best walrus impression. Which he does every single night. They talk, they joke around, they exist and Clarke hasn’t existed in a long while.

The sunlight feels good on her face and she sits on the beach for hours, the smell of Octavia’s coconut tanning lotion and salt, just watching the waves crash onto the shore. It gets easier as she allows herself to be in the moment, to forget – even if for only a minute, a perfect minute.

Bellamy never leaves her side and after a few weeks, she knows that she is ready. The guilt is still a constant feeling in her stomach, coiling it and twisting her insides, but it’s fainter.

They’re walking down the pier when she inhales deeply – takes it all in, the smell of saltwater and candy cotton a street vendor is selling.

The sun is setting, blood red trickling into the sea and wind is ruffling Bellamy’s hair. He is holding her hand and she smiles because Monty was right. Bellamy is the only one who makes the accusing voices grow quieter. She thinks she would surely float away into the ether if it weren’t for his hand tethering her to where she really belongs.

Clarke exhales and there they are. Raven is playing with the ends of Clarke’s hair, humming softly to herself, and Monty’s head is leaning on her knee – a small, relieved smile brushing across his lips. Miller places a hand on her shoulder – “It’s good to have you back.” _We missed you_ , their voices echo in her head and the tears that come are almost invited – it’s so wonderful, it’s breathtaking to finally feel them next to her.

_God_ , her soul seems to scream, _why did it take you so long?_

This is where she belongs. This is where all the pain is washed away by their comforting touches and smiles – no anger, just longing and love.

Jasper’s face is small and sad where it was once loud and boisterous. She wraps her arms around him, lets him cry into her hair and tells him that there is nothing to be sorry about. He is forgiven, all of them are. Finally – they are. Clarke gladly takes the weight on her shoulders – she bears it so they don’t have to.

She loves them, she loves them because there is nothing else. Their bodies, waves, colliding against one another – love and longing, what created the universe – pure, unaltered desire shifting the night sky until stars became and with them – her soulmates.

Science can explain the gravity, the becoming of life, the red shift of a star dying far away, but it can’t explain how every road, every turn ends with them falling into each other’s arms.

So she takes the plunge, allows her thirst to be quenched because they are with her and no guilt can compare to what it feels like to be loved, to be wanted and craved. Nothing hurts because the sheer force of their love envelops her whole and no guilt, no pain could be stronger than them – transcending the barriers of space and time to form one soul out of six parts.

“Welcome home,” Bellamy whispers and she is submerged into a wave of everything this people feel for her. It’s vast and it’s kind and she can’t fight it anymore.

This is where she belongs. This is where she will stay.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have way too many feelings about this, about all of you. I had hoped I would provoke you to get emotionally invested in these characters, in this story, but the degree is what astounds me. I can't believe I actually succeded, and in such a great number.
> 
> But I wasn't alone in this. The biggest thank you goes to [lushatrocity](http://archiveofourown.org/users/lushatrocity) who was here every step of the decision-making and thought-processing way. Thank you, lovely!
> 
> And then, of course - you. All of you who took the time to sit down and read this, who took the time to leave a line or ten to let me know that you liked it. Thank you for that and I can't even begin to explain how much it means to know that someone liked your work, to know that you are not just shouting in the wind and hoping someone hears. Thank you, thank you so much! I hope that this chapter met with your approval and if it didn't - feel free to come at me with pitchforks and torches because you deserved to like this. And if I didn't come through, I'm to blame. 
> 
> Once again - a huge, huge thank you - you are all amazing and wonderful and have rendered me speechless way too many times to even count! Thank you!

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! I hope you liked it - I hope it made you feel the feels and if it did - even if they were angry ones - please let me know. There is nothing I like more than reading your comments and I can't stop smiling any time someone takes a minute to write at least one line. You all make me happy, you're amazing and I love you loads!
> 
> To recap, in case I didn't manage to explain it properly - the cluster is as it follows:  
> Clarke - doctor, Boston/USA  
> Bellamy - history teacher, Manila/The Philippines  
> Monty - IT security consultant by day, hacker by night, Seoul/South Korea  
> Miller - thief, Marseille/France  
> Jasper - chemist, LA/USA  
> Raven - mechanic, Chile (currently in the Chilean base on Antarctica)
> 
> Once again - a huge thanks to [lushatrocity](http://archiveofourown.org/users/lushatrocity) who is a lifesaver and also writes awesome fics you should check out right now!
> 
> And thank you - all of you who've read this. You're the best. :)
> 
> p.s. i can be reached on [tumblr](http://marauders-groupie.tumblr.com) for compliments/criticism/cookies/prompts/chat. :)
> 
> Stay tuned for chapter 2!


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